We think of our galaxy as being shaped like a big pinwheel. Yet we’ve never sent a camera outside of our galaxy to get an ‘outside view.’
We can’t travel outside the galaxy to take pictures. A space probe moving at near light speed would take thousands of years to get far enough away to take a parting snapshot.
But we can infer the shape of our galaxy by looking outward into space – toward tens of billions of other galaxies. Our universe makes galaxies only in only a few basic models. The most common are spiral or disk-shaped galaxies – and we believe our galaxy is one of these. Like snowflakes, though, no two spiral galaxies are exactly alike. So we may never know exactly what the Milky Way looks like from outside its boundaries.
One fair example of what our Milky Way might look like is the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. It’s believed to be sort of a celestial twin to the Milky Way. Any civilizations in Andromeda might now be peering our direction across 2 million light-years of space. They might be wondering if their galaxy looks like ours.
is this explanation really correct?? cause throughout my childhood iv heard of our galaxy as being spiral..but is this really an assumption?
there has to be a way to find out really
from explanation above ‘…..and we believe our galaxy is one of these…’ – but why? is the question.
from explanation above ‘…..and we believe our galaxy is one of these…’ – but why? is the question
Because our galaxy is a “celestial twin” so by that definition our galaxy is similar. It actually makes sense that objects next to each other would be similar.
For example the stars that are closer to one another have a higher the likelihood that they share the same elements.
Another example is that the further we look out in space from our galaxy the more different their galaxies will be different from ours.
Did you know what there are some Stars that dont use Hydrogen, or oxygen? While for our Sun it still uses mostly Hydrogen.
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from explanation above ‘…..and we believe our galaxy is one of these…’ – but why? is the question
Because our galaxy is a “celestial twin” so by that definition our galaxy is similar. It actually makes sense that objects next to each other would be similar.
For example the closer stars are to one another the higher the likelihood that they share the same elements.
then hw do we knw exactly the shapes of othr galaxies????????????
Is there a chance that our galaxies are the result of a ”cyclone type” of phenomenon? The ideas is that we can see is the result of matter being pulled out of a black hole and spread out slowly over space and time. A black hole would then rather be seen as a place where matter is born rather than where it is sucked into?
Shot in the dark.