Many people who live on Earth are close minded to what is really out there in the universe. They cannot even begin to fathom the vastness of it and how Earth is just a tiny little speck compared to everything else out there. From the planets to the stars and out towards the edge of the unknown, we can only see what science provides us with. From this, we know that we are nothing but a tiny planet located in a solar system of millions in a galaxy of many more in the universe.
A galaxy, also called a nebula, consists of billions of stars, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter which are all bound to form a massive cloud in which we live in. Although it cannot be very well explained, dark matter makes up at least 90% of a galaxy’s mass. Galaxies also contain billions upon billions of stars and their diameter can range from 1,500 to 300,000 light years. That’s huge! The Milky Way, the galaxy in which we live in, is one of about 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Our Sun is one of the billions of stars in our galaxy, and our eight planets revolve around this star in only a tiny part of our galaxy. “The Earth’s solar system is believed to exist very close to the Galaxy’s galactic plane, due to the fact that the Milky Way essentially divides the night sky into two virtually equal hemispheres” ("All About the Milky"). It definitely makes people second guess the fact of there being life on other planets.
The first person to ever observe the Milky Way was Greek philosopher, Democritus, who said the galaxy may consist of distant stars. In 1610, Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the Milky Way and came to the conclusion that it was composed of billions and billions of faint stars. Then, in 1750, Thomas Wright c...
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...nucleus; this type of AGN was discovered byHeckman (1980) is called Low-Ionization Nuclear Emission-line Region (LINER); examples include the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) andM65.
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Many of the heavenly bodies were considered to be the representations of deities. The master of reason, Aristotle, stated once long ago that everything was made of only five elements the final being what makes up the heavenly bodies, after all they lacked the proper technologies to know differently. It was Galileo in 1610, using his telescope, that found dark spots on the sun. So as technological innovations occur our understanding of physics and astronomy grow. Newton in 1687 discovered the laws of gravity, suggested that all the solar and stellar bodies operated the same.
In the article The Cosmic Perspective by Neil deGrasse Tyson he examines a range of topics from human life coming from Mars to how our perspective of the universe relates to religion. In the year 2000, a new space show opened at the Hayden Planetarium called Passport to the Universe, which compared the size of people Milky Way and beyond. While a show like this might make someone feel minuscule and insignificant, Tyson says that seeing the size of the universe actually makes him feel more alive not less and gives him a sense of grandeur. I agree with his idea that looking at us as a people in comparison can actually give you a sense of grandeur. However, when I compare myself to the vastness of space, it puts events on Earth in perspective while showing how influential we can be as a people even if we are small.
For as long as they have existed, humans have had ideas about what the universe holds. Through the millennia they have come to know quite a bit about what is out there, yet the universe is so vast, the greatest human minds have not been able to find everything. However, thanks to a relatively new theory called panpsychism, there may just be an answer. David J Chalmers, an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist, has written a research paper titled, “Panpsychism and Panportopsychism,” that may allow some more understanding on what really is out there, through his use of ethos, logos, and diction.
The article for this research is “37.2 Trillion: Galaxies or Human Cells?” by Nicholas Balakar and it appeared in the New York Times. In this article, Balakar poses a question regarding which has a higher number: all of the known galaxies in the observed universe and the number of cells in the average human body. In attempting to determine the answer, he immediately states that both totals would be massive in number and that it would be impossible to reach a precise answer. There are also several unknown factors involved in this question, including the fact that the human body can vary in size a great deal and the fact that the size of the known universe is constantly changing with our ability to observe it. While individual galaxies have been identified at length, our definition of what a galaxy is has evolved over time and may continue to do so. Galaxy derived from Greek galaxias. Galaxies are defined by the National Geographic as:” sprawling space systems composed of dust gas and countless stars.” At the same time, nobody
The extreme brightness of the O-type and B-type stars, coupled with the Earth’s atmosphere, has always made high-resolution imaging of the star-forming region difficult. But recent advances in adaptive optics and the repair of the Hubble Space Telescope have allowed for incredible detail into the center of the dust cloud. 3 The technological advances have also helped reveal several faint stars within the center of the nebula.
astounding wonders of the galaxy, but we may never find the answers that we’re looking for.
Waller, William H. The Milky Way: An Insider's Guide. Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 2013. 42+. Print.
Exploring the stars through it, he proved that the Milky Way is a set of distant and therefore faint stars. In his famous "Star Herald" in 1609, Galileo wrote: "I turned to the observation of the essence or matter of the Milky Way, and with the help of the telescope it was possible to make it so accessible to our eyes that all disputes were silenced by the clarity and evidence that I am exempt from a verbose dispute. In fact, the Milky Way is nothing more than a countless number of stars, as if located in piles, in whatever direction the telescope is directed, a huge number of stars are immediately visible, a few are quite bright and quite distinguishable, the number of stars. In 1755, the German philosopher and Immanuel Kant suggested that the stars form groups in space, just as the planets make up the solar system. These groups he called "star islands". According to Kant, one of such countless islands is the Milky Way - a grand cluster of stars, visible in the sky as a light misty band. In ancient Greek, the word "galaktikos" means "milky," so the Milky Way and star-like systems similar to it are called
People are not alone in the universe because there are millions of planets that can harbor life, millions of galaxies similar to the milky way, and it is scientifically probable. To start off, there are millions of planets similar to Earth that can harbor life. NASA predicts that in the Milky Way there may be up to 100 million planets that may host life (Fearnow). NASA is one of the best space agencies in the world,
...culiar patches known as nebulae that were inside of them. Heber Curtis spotted multiple stars in Andromeda and argued that it was a separate galaxy. His argument wasn’t concluded until 1925 when Edwin Hubble identified a special kind of star known as a Cepheid variable. A Cepheid variable is a star whose characteristics allow for exact measurements of distance within Andromeda. Since Shapley had previously determined that the Milky Way was only 100,000 light-years across, Edwin Hubble’s calculations reported that the fuzzy patches were too far away to lay within the Milky Way Galaxy.(www.crystalinks.com 1)
Many things are out there in the universe and several more different things out there that we do not understand and we have yet to figure out. There are many things out there in this universe that have yet to be discovered so how come is the idea of life on other planets so hard to grasp for some people. They do not necessarily have to be very intelligent life forms, they can small living bacteria too. Many scientist and astronomers have questioned this and are still looking for answers to this question in life, are we truly the only ones out here in this universe. Many people may also refuse to believe in other life because they may be scared of what is out there but that we may have company out there or that we may be alone in this vast
Consider astronomy one of the most ancient scientific disciplines known to human mankind. The observation of stars and planets was well known already to ancient civilizations from the Mayan to the Babylonians as these were recorded by historical records such as astral apes, and like this one are of Hispanic origin and is Japanese in this fear based on a Korean map of the 14th century. The ancient Greek had developed a very sophisticated astronomical system with Ptolemy in the second century A.D. In the solar system planets moved along orbital shells. This was the simplest astronomical hypothesis but it requires some tweaks to account for some anomalous phenomena.
The universe, it's vastness, how it was created, and why we are a part of it amazes and astounds many people who are constantly searching for answers. Others believe they have the answers and try to persuade people to understand their view. Others don't even think about it at all.
The Universe is a collection of millions of galaxies and extends beyond human imagination. After the big bang, the universe was found to be composed of radiation and subatomic particles. Information following big bang is arguable on how galaxies formed, that is whether small particles merged to form clusters and eventually galaxies or whether the universe systematized as immense clumps of matter that later fragmented into galaxies (Nasa World book, 2013). A galaxy is a massive area of empty space full of dust, gases (mainly 75% Hydrogen and 25%Helium), atoms, about 100-200 billion stars, interstellar clouds and planets, attracted to the center by gravitational force of attraction. Based on recent research, 170 billion galaxies have been estimated to exist, with only tens of thousands been discovered (Deutsch, 2011).
A year later, using such an early refracting telescope, Galileo Galilei, an Italian physicist and astronomer, noticed the craters and mountains on the moon as well as what was later coined as the Milky Way Galaxy.