Hello fellow Earthlings! Did you guys know that our galaxy is called the Milky Way Galaxy and no, I am not talking about the chocolate and caramel goodness you can bite into. I am referring to the place that we live in, our friendly neighborhood spiral galaxy. A galaxy is a network of stars, planets, gas, dark matter and dust held together by gravity. A typical galaxy could have millions, billions or even trillions of these networks all held together by our good old gravity friend. Pretty intense to ponder about.

Milky Way?

The reason why our galaxy is called the Milky Way galaxy is because if you glance up at the night sky, and is fortunate enough to be in a place with minimal light pollution, you can tilt your head up towards the beautiful sky and see a river of milky light. The “river of milky light’ is part of our spiral galaxy and it sort of looks like a real milky river flowing through the sky. The Milky Way stretches about 100,000 light-years across. Think about trying to drive across this unimaginable distance, that would be a lot of gas money! The Milky way is a spiral galaxy that is constantly rotating and the Sun and our Solar System travels within it. Buried deep within the very center of the galaxy is a gargantuan supermassive black hole. Think about this, you can fit 1 million Earths inside of the Sun. Now, if that doesn’t just blow your mind, check this out..the black hole, that is at our galaxy’s center is billions of times as massive as the Sun (mind blown). If you thought you had a huge appetite, you are in for a big surprise. Our black hole consumes stars, dust, possibly rogue planets, gas and more, pretty much anything that is crazy enough to come in its path of devourment. If you are ever bored on the weekend and decide to take a trip to Outer Space, please be sure to not come too close to a black hole or you may be it’s next meal on space wheels. Don’t worry our teeny weeny small Earth is about 30,0000 light years away from the black hole, so you can breathe now. Our friendly neighborhood galaxy may contain over 200 billion stars, so I guess if you need to borrow a cup of sugar you may be waiting in line a while.

Ok...so,

$fractal-1280110_1920.jpg$

What is a black hole?

Black holes are very strange and weird. Black holes are very dense and have gravitational pulls that are so strong not even light can escape from them. Our sun is considered a star and there are billions of stars out in the vastness of space. As a star uses up its fuel, it will began to try and find other sources of fuel which causes it to collapse in on itself, therefore creating a black hole. The black hole grows its diameter by absorbing the surrounding cosmic dust and gas therefore growing in size. Some believe that if one were to get eaten by a black hole, the person will get sucked in and spit out into another dimension not yet discovered by mankind. Others believe that if one were to tango with a black hole the person’s body will be stretched out hundreds of feet and spaghettified to very thin noodle like pieces. If that happens be sure to bring a ton of alfredo or marinara sauce. I guess we may never know...or will we?

Knowledge for the Brain:

Parker Solar Probe "A Nasa Mission to Touch the Sun"

Source Space.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration.

Solar System 101

Recent Posts

Look up in the sky! It’s a bird, It’s a plane...NO, It’s a space rock???

Is that an Oreo Cookie in the sky? Nope, just a solar eclipse

Galaxy 101