The Fascinating Journey of Earth and the Sun through the Milky Way Galaxy

SPACE — We as humans never realize that when we are still, we are actually making two journeys simultaneously. The first is that we are on Earth revolving around the sun and also crossing the Milky Way galaxy.

Just as the moon orbits the Earth, the Earth orbits the sun, the sun also orbits the Milky Way galaxy. More precisely, orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The entire Milky Way galaxy and its contents actually continue to revolve around the heart of our galaxy’s black hole.

So, how many times exactly does our solar system revolve around the heart of the Milky Way’s giant black hole? The answer is very difficult.

Compared to the orbits of the planets around the sun, the sun’s path through the Milky Way is much longer and less stable. So, it’s hard to count how many times we’ve orbited the galactic center.

Using simple mathematics, scientists can reveal how long it takes for the solar system to cross the Milky Way galaxy. This formula can give a good estimate of how much the Earth travels. But providing more accurate answers is tricky.

The speed at which the sun moves

The sun and the entire solar system are currently moving through our galaxy at a speed of about 720,000 km/h. The speed looked very fast. However, some stars in the Milky Way, are known as stars hypervelocitytraversing the galaxy at speeds of up to 8.2 million km/h.

At the sun’s current speed, it would take our home star about 230 million years to complete one journey around the Milky Way.

According to The Planetary Society, the sun is about 4.6 billion years old. Earth was born about 100 million years later. This means that if the Sun’s orbital path remains constant throughout this time, the Sun has completed about 20 journeys across the Bisa Sakti galaxy. The Earth is dragged along for 98 percent of the journey.

However, the sun’s orbit does not remain constant throughout its lifetime. Instead, the sun has likely moved around since it first formed.

“The sun may not have been born where we find it now,” said Victor Debattista, an astrophysicist at the University of Central Lancashire in England.

Instead, he said, the sun may have been born closer to the center of the Milky Way.

Currently, Earth is about 26,100 light years from the center of the galaxy. However, the metal content, or chemical content, of the sun shows that the sun was born about 16,300 light years from the galaxy’s core.

This shifting position of the sun or outward movement is known as radial migration. When the sun was born, its orbital period was much shorter. Our star probably took about 125 million years to complete the journey around the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

2023-12-18 10:39:00
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