{"id":53668,"date":"2024-01-13T09:31:40","date_gmt":"2024-01-13T09:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/63605b37-2880-41ad-a6d9-fc8f822b774f"},"modified":"2024-01-13T11:34:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-13T11:34:00","slug":"where-is-earth-located-in-the-milky-way","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/rss_feed\/where-is-earth-located-in-the-milky-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is Earth located in the Milky Way?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Far from being at the centre of the Universe, Earth is located in the spiral arm of a fairly small galaxy. <\/p>

By Russell Deeks\n <\/p>

Published: Saturday, 13 January 2024 at 09:31 AM<\/p>

\n\n

Earth is located in a spiral arm in the Milky Way galaxy, but it’s only relatively recently that this has become a widely-accepted fact.<\/p>

Long ago, people thought that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe.<\/p>

This \u2018geocentric\u2019 view was challenged as early as the 3rd<\/sup> Century by those who argued Earth and the other planets actually orbited the Sun.<\/p>

But the \u2018heliocentric\u2019 model of the Solar System didn\u2019t really catch on until the 17th<\/sup> Century, after Copernicus<\/a> published the first mathematical model of a heliocentric model (in 1514) and Galileo<\/a> then expanded on his ideas.<\/p>

Later, astronomers would come to realise first that the Sun was merely one star in the Milky Way galaxy<\/a>.<\/p>

Then came the discovery by Edwin Hubble<\/a> that the Milky Way itself was just one galaxy out of millions.<\/p>

This make Earth and its inhabitants even less important in the grand scheme of things.<\/p>

Where is Earth in the Milky Way?<\/strong><\/h2>
Artist’s impression showing where the Sun and Earth are located in the Milky Way. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>

The bad news for geocentrists is that our Solar System doesn\u2019t even lie at the heart of the Milky Way.<\/p>

In fact, Earth can be found on one of the Milky Way galaxy\u2019s outlying spiral arms \u2013 the Orion-Cygnus arm, to be precise.<\/p>

And Earth is sitting at a point roughly halfway from the galactic centre to its outer rim. To reach either, you\u2019d have to travel about 25,000 lightyears.<\/p>

How do we know where Earth lies in the Milky Way?<\/strong><\/h2>
\"The
The Milky Way isn’t even that big. It’s half the size of the Andromeda Galaxy (pictured). Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>

It\u2019s hard to say much about the Milky Way\u2019s structure with any certainty because we\u2019re a part of it.<\/p>

Unlike other galaxies that we can see through telescopes, we can\u2019t look at the Milky Way face-on.<\/p>

Its shape must be determined by extrapolating from other observed phenomena, so our current picture may not be entirely accurate.<\/p>

But ‘about halfway out, on the Orion-Cygnus’ arm gives you a rough idea of where we\u2019re at.<\/p>

To make matters worse, the Milky Way isn\u2019t a particularly large galaxy: its nearest neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy<\/a>, is roughly twice the size.<\/p>

On the plus side, the two galaxies put together (plus some smaller neighbours) make up the Local Group<\/a> of galaxies, which is part of the Virgo Supercluster<\/a>, which in turn is part of the Laniakea supercluster, which is part of the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, which is one of the largest structures in the observable Universe.<\/p>

In other words, far from being the centre of the Universe, Earth is actually a small, insignificant planet in a small, insignificant galaxy.<\/p>

But it\u2019s also part of something that\u2019s absolutely mind-blowingly enormous.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n

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