Four Themes: Space
My second Research Topic For this Phase is Space I decided to look into space because it is such a vacuum of knowledge and there is so much that can be found out about space which I believe will make researching this very interesting and thus provide some good research results.
However, since space is a very large and vague word to use for research I have decided strategically for this Phase and the sake of this presentation since I only have 8 minutes to get through my four topics to limit my research of space as a whole down to just our galaxy, which in retrospect is still a humungous field of study. To start this research on our galaxy known by the scientific community as the milky way galaxy I decided firstly to look for some key and generic facts and then if any of those stand out to me I am going to dig further into them.
Couture, E. (2015). 10 Facts about the Milky Way - Planetarium and Astronomy Center - University of Maine. [online] Planetarium and Astronomy Center. Available at: https://astro.umaine.edu/10-facts-about-the-milky-way/.
1. It’s warped.
The Milky Way is a disk that measures about 120,000 light-years across, with a central bulge that has a diameter of about 12,000 light years. The disk is not perfectly flat though, it is warped due to our neighboring galaxies Large and Small Magellanic clouds. These two galaxies have been pulling on the matter in our galaxy like a game of tug-of-war.
2. It has an invisible halo.
Our galaxy is made up of about 90% dark matter, a matter that cannot be seen, and about 10% “luminous matter”, or matter that we can see with our eyes. This large quantity of dark matter causes an invisible halo that has been demonstrated by simulations of how the Milky Way spins. If dark matter did not exist, then the stars within the Milky Way would orbit much slower than has been observed.
3. It has over 200 billion stars.
The Milky Way is only a media medium-size day with an estimated 200 billion stars. The largest galaxy we know of is called IC 1101 and has over 100 trillion stars.
4. It’s gassy.
About 10-15% of the Milky Way’s visible matter is made of dust and gas, with the rest being stars. On a clear night, the dusty ring of the Milky Way can be seen in the night sky.
5. It was made from other galaxies.
For Milky Way to achieve its current size and shape it has consumed other galaxies throughout its history. Our galaxy is currently consuming the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy by adding the smaller galaxy’s stars to its al.
6. We can’t take pictures of it.
Since we are located about 26,000 light years from the Milky Way’s center, we cannot take pictures of the disk. Any representation that you have ever seen of our galaxy is either a different spiral galaxy or what an artist thinks it might look like.
7. There is a black hole at the center.
Like most larger galaxies, the Milky Way has a supermassive black hole at its center called Sagittarius A*. This black hole has an estimated diameter of 14 million miles, which does not include the disk of mass being drawn into it. This outer disk has about 14.6 million times the mass of our Sun in what would be similar to the orbit of the Earth!
8. It’s almost as old as the Universe itself.
Scientists estimate that the Universe is about 13.7 billion years old and that the Milky Way is about 13.6 billion years old. Although the main parts of the galaxy were formed in the early days of the Universe, the disk and the bulge did not fully form until about 10-12 billion years ago.
9. It’s part of the Virgo Supercluster, a group of galaxies within 150 million light years.
The Virgo Supercluster contains at least 100 galaxy groups and clusters and is about 110 million light-years in diameter. A 2014 study shows that the Virgo Supercluster is only one lobe of a greater supercluster called Laniakea.
10. It’s on the move.
Everything in space, including the Milky Way, is moving. The Earth moves around the Sun, the Sun moves in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way cruises through space. The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, rather than left over from the Big Bang, is used as a reference point to measure the velocity of things moving in space. The Local Group of galaxies, which the Milky Way is part of, is estimated to be moving at about 600 km/s or 2.2 million km/hr.!
The Website I used to source those facts above was pretty simple in the descriptions it gave for each of the ten facts that it listed however, it wasn't useless research because some of the facts presented on that site left me wanting to research further into them. So my next step was to take the questions I had and try and find answers to them.
Erickson, K. (2016). What Is a Light-Year? | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids. [online] Nasa.gov. Available at: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/light-year/en/.
The first question I thought of when reading the above information was "what is a lightyear?" whenever you hear about anything happening in space on the news or in media they always use the term lightyear which can be easily misunderstood because it makes you believe its a measured time, however, from my research I found (using the source above) that it is in fact a measure of distance.
As according to that site "For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). That is a 6 with 12 zeros behind it!" (For reference that is 6,000,000,000,000 Miles)
Another thing I found interesting was that when we look out into space we are actually looking back in time??? Turns out this is because "Light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles (or 300,000 km) per second. This seems really fast, but objects in space are so far away that it takes a lot of time for their light to reach us. The farther an object is, the farther in the past we see it." and for example "Our Sun is the closest star to us. It is about 93 million miles away. So, the Sun's light takes about 8.3 minutes to reach us. This means that we always see the Sun as it was about 8.3 minutes ago."
Monday, K.H. | P., July 22 and 2019 (n.d.). The Milky Way cannibalized a neighboring galaxy. [online] Astronomy.com. Available at: https://astronomy.com/news/2019/07/the-milky-way-cannibalized-a-neighboring-galaxy#:~:text=The%20fact%20that%20astronomers%20see%20these%20populations%20mixed.
The second question I had when looking at my initial fact-finding research was that on that page it stated that the milky way achieved its current size by consuming other galaxies. Being baffled by this information I had to look further and on the site listed above I found the following:
"Ten billion years ago, the Milky Way encountered another galaxy in the vast emptiness of space and consumed it. Dubbed Gaia-Enceladus by astronomers, this stranger was roughly one-quarter the Milky Way’s size, and it forever changed the makeup and shape of our home galaxy."
which states that approx. ten billion years ago the milky way collided with "Gaia-Enceladus" and increased in size as a result as the site states these mergers of galaxies colliding with one another are believed to be how galaxies evolve and grow in size and due to the medium size (200 billion stars) of our home galaxy even without finding out exactly when the milky way consumed another galaxy astronomers knew that it had consumed at least one other galaxy in its past.
To further look into space, I started to look some famous scientists/psychists and got some quotes from them about space.
The First person I looked into was Professor Brian Cox he is very well known in the world of space research especially by the public for his amazing voice and narration of space documentary's I found one specific quote from him that I like and that is as shown in the image below: "We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself".
I partially like this quote because not only does he talk about the universe and consciousness which are really cool areas of study, but it also links to my first topic that I'm looking at for this upcoming 8-minute presentation the meaning of life when he says "And life is the means by which the universe understands itself"
Due to the linking of the quote from Cox and my first topic, I began to think about how religion may perceive space and found the following:
Listverse. (2017). 10 Weird Ways Major Religions Have Weighed in On Aliens and UFOs. [online] Available at: https://listverse.com/2017/10/10/10-weird-ways-major-religions-have-weighed-in-on-aliens-and-ufos/#:~:text=Space%20is%20a%20bit%20of%20a%20problem%20for
Catholicism: There Are Aliens, But No Alien Jesus
Since 1582, the Vatican has hosted an observatory dedicated to staring out into outer space, and after more than 400 years of looking, they’re convinced that life is out there.
The Vatican’s chief astronomer, Father Jose Funes, has gone on the record saying that it’s just a matter of time before we find extraterrestrial life. And one of his astronomers, Guy Consolmagno, says that those aliens have souls.
But there’s no alien Jesus, the Vatican insists—just a planet full of heathen extraterrestrials that are all doomed to go to Hell. “The incarnation of the Son of God is a unique event in the history of humanity of the universe,” Father Funes said. “The discovery of intelligent life does not mean there’s another Jesus.”
Pope Francis seems to agree, and he’s ready to baptize the aliens. “If [ . . .] tomorrow an expedition of Martians came,” the Pope has said, “and one says, ‘But I want to be baptized!’ [ . . .] Who are we to close doors?”
Mormonism: Adam, Eve, And God All Came from Alien Planet
Joseph Smith believed there was life on other planets, too, but he didn’t think they were heathens. Way out in space, at the farthest start from Earth, he taught his followers, is a planet called Kolob—and that planet is God’s home.
Joseph Smith didn’t just say that God was an alien, though; he said that humans are aliens, too. Adam and Eve, he said, “came here from another planet.” And, since every person alive is descended from them, every person on Earth is an extraterrestrial.
The Mormon church doesn’t believe we’ll ever make it home, though. They were so sure of it that months before Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, church president Joseph Fielding Smith swore: “We will never get a man into space.”
“The earth is man’s sphere, and it was never intended that he should get away from it. The moon is a superior planet to the earth, and it was never intended that man should go there,” Smith said. Then, brimming with confidence, he declared: “You can write it down in your books that this will never happen.”
The Nation of Islam: Elijah Muhammad Is Flying Over the Earth in A UFO
What white people call UFOs, Elijah Muhammad once told his followers, are, Flying wheels called “Mother Planes,” and they’ve been orbiting the Earth since Biblical times.
According to the Nation of Islam, there are UFOs in the Bible. He claims that a cloud Ezekiel spotted in the sky was built thousands of years ago in Japan, which, is way further ahead in technology than we thought. There have been 1,500 of these UFOs orbiting the Earth for the past few thousand years, most of which are hiding in a gigantic wheel that may one day destroy the planet.
It’s one of the crazier tenants of the Nation of Islam, but they haven’t backed down on it. “There’s enough evidence that has been put before the world and public,” Ishmael Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad’s son, said just a few years ago. “I don’t think you would find too many people that would call it crazy.”
Some of the religion’s followers take it even further. Elijah Muhammad, they insist, never actually died. Instead, he was brought back to life after his heart attack—and now he’s in one of those UFOs, flying above the Earth, waiting until it is time to return.