3 ms·
The thing is so wide that light needs to travel 140,000 years (!) to get from one side to the other. That’s just so hard to wrap my head around. I never even re
by gdubs 7y ago
The thing is so wide that light needs to travel 140,000 years (!) to get from one side to the other. That’s just so hard to wrap my head around. I never even really considered that our own galaxy is 100,000 light years across.
Think of all the human history that occurred over 100,000 years — that’s how long it takes for light to go from one side of the Milky Way to another.
- javajosh 7y agoIts cool to visualize a little bubble around the Solar System that represents the 100 or so years we've been emitting radio waves into space. The signal would be very faint (power falls as 1/r^2) but visually if you zoom out on the milky way its a tiny little bubble around our system that barely reaches into our home galaxy. It's a humbling visualization.
- solstice 7y agoThis fact is used to great comedic effect in a Futurama episode. (S01E12)
- EForEndeavour 7y agoAnd in the first artificial radio transmissions received from outer space in Carl Sagan's Contact (both the book and movie).
- ComputerGuru 7y agoAncient History starts at 3000 BC, for context.
- cthalupa 7y ago> I never even really considered that our own galaxy is 100,000 light years across. The Gaia telescope has helped us revise a lot of numbers around the Milky Way - we're actually likely the biggest kid on the block. The estimate the size of the Milky Way to be 170,000 to 200,000 light years across.
- Koshkin 7y agoThe star counts are huge, too - about a half a trillion stars in our galaxy alone.