How many light-years is the Milky Way?

Our galaxy probably contains 100 to 400 billion stars, and is about 100,000 light-years across.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on exoplanets.nasa.gov

How many light-years is it across the Milky Way galaxy?

The Milky Way is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km (about 100,000 light years or about 30 kpc) across. The Sun does not lie near the center of our Galaxy.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov

How long would it take to leave the Milky Way in light-years?

The Sun is situated about halfway from the centre and is near the middle of the disk in the vertical direction. So, to leave our Galaxy, we would have to travel about 500 light-years vertically, or about 25,000 light-years away from the galactic centre.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on sciencefocus.com

Why can't we see 15 billion light-years away?

Galaxies may exist at that distance, but their light would be too faint for our telescopes to see. C. Because looking 15 billion light-years away means looking to a time before the universe existed.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on cassucsd.edu

How long would it take to travel 100 trillion light years?

Some galaxies will have fallen over the cosmic horizon, where no amount of time would ever let you reach them. If you wanted to travel 100 trillion light years away, you could make the journey in 62 years.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on universetoday.com

Light year & Milky Way - NASA Video

42 related questions found

What is the oldest thing we can see in the universe?

Astronomers have discovered what may be the oldest and most distant galaxy ever observed. The galaxy, called HD1, dates from a bit more than 300 million years after the Big Bang that marked the origin of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago, researchers said on Thursday.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on euronews.com

Can we ever leave our galaxy?

The technology required to travel between galaxies is far beyond humanity's present capabilities, and currently only the subject of speculation, hypothesis, and science fiction. However, theoretically speaking, there is nothing to conclusively indicate that intergalactic travel is impossible.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on en.wikipedia.org

Will Earth survive Andromeda collision?

Andromeda–Milky Way collision

The merger will totally alter the night sky over Earth but will likely leave the solar system unharmed, according to NASA.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on trtworld.com

What happens when 2 galaxies collide?

“When two galaxies start to merge, their central supermassive black holes sink to the center of this newly formed galaxy and eventually merge” into a single, bigger black hole, Chiara Mingarelli, an astrophysicist at the University of Connecticut and the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics who ...

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on theatlantic.com

What will the Milky Way look like in 1 trillion years?

Our Milky Way will have lost its identity long ago through merging with the Andromeda galaxy, M31. The resulting giant elliptical galaxy will be devoid of dust and gas. The night sky will be a largely homogeneous sprinkling of stars. Stellar density will concentrate toward the galactic core.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on seeker.com

How long would it take to travel 4 light-years?

Proxima Centauri is 4.2 light-years from Earth, a distance that would take about 6,300 years to travel using current technology. Such a trip would take many generations.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on technologyreview.com

How many suns are in our galaxy?

There are likely to be many more planetary systems out there waiting to be discovered! Our Sun is just one of about 200 billion stars in our galaxy.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on spaceplace.nasa.gov

What can destroy a galaxy?

"Black holes form inside their host galaxies and grow inproportion to them, forming an accretion disc which will eventually destroy thehost," he added. "In this sense they can be described as viral innature."

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on space.com

What is the closest black hole to Earth?

Located just under 1,600 light-years away, the discovery suggests there might be a sizable population of dormant black holes in binary systems. The black hole Gaia BH1, seen in this artist's concept near its Sun-like companion star, is the closest black hole to Earth discovered so far.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on astronomy.com

Do all galaxies have black holes?

Astronomers believe that supermassive black holes lie at the center of virtually all large galaxies, even our own Milky Way. Astronomers can detect them by watching for their effects on nearby stars and gas.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on science.nasa.gov

How many years will Andromeda hit us?

The Andromeda galaxy is currently racing toward our Milky Way at a speed of about 70 miles (113 km) per second. With this in mind, our merger will occur five billion years from now.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on earthsky.org

How long would it take humans to reach Andromeda?

How long would it take to get to the Andromeda Galaxy? Forget it! Although it may be one of the closest galaxies to our own, since the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light years distant it would take 2.5 million years to get there if (and it's a huge 'if') we could travel at the speed of light.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on forbes.com

Do humans come from Stardust?

Most of the elements of our bodies were formed in stars over the course of billions of years and multiple star lifetimes. However, it's also possible that some of our hydrogen (which makes up roughly 9.5% of our bodies) and lithium, which our body contains in very tiny trace amounts, originated from the Big Bang.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on nhm.ac.uk

Will space be around forever?

Scientists now consider it unlikely the universe has an end – a region where the galaxies stop or where there would be a barrier of some kind marking the end of space. But nobody knows for sure.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on news.yahoo.com

What is beyond the universe?

The trite answer is that both space and time were created at the big bang about 14 billion years ago, so there is nothing beyond the universe. However, much of the universe exists beyond the observable universe, which is maybe about 90 billion light years across.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on newscientist.com

How long will universe last?

22 billion years in the future is the earliest possible end of the Universe in the Big Rip scenario, assuming a model of dark energy with w = −1.5. False vacuum decay may occur in 20 to 30 billion years if the Higgs field is metastable.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on en.wikipedia.org

What is the rarest thing in the universe?

Only 1-in-10,000 galaxies fall into the rarest category of all: ring galaxies. With a dense core consisting of old stars, and a circular or elliptical ring consisting of bright, blue, young stars, the first ring was only discovered in 1950: Hoag's object.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on bigthink.com

How many universes are there?

In a new study, Stanford physicists Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin have calculated the number of all possible universes, coming up with an answer of 10^10^16.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on phys.org

What is the most powerful thing in the universe?

That's about the same amount of energy in 10 trillion trillion billion megaton bombs! These explosions generate beams of high-energy radiation, called gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), which are considered by astronomers to be the most powerful thing in the universe.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on sj-r.com

What can destroy Earth instantly?

Six cosmic catastrophes that could wipe out life on Earth
  • High energy solar flare. Our sun is not as peaceful a star as one might initially think. ...
  • Asteroid impact. ...
  • Expanding sun. ...
  • Local gamma ray burst. ...
  • Nearby supernovas. ...
  • Moving stars.

Takedown request   |   View complete answer on theconversation.com