What is our galaxy's escape velocity?

Answer 1

Jose is right for the most part. What he means is that, unlike the Earth and other bodies in the galaxy, which are more or less round, the galaxy is a spiral, so the escape velocity is not easily calculated and changes from the center going out of the ecliptic (galactic plane) or out to the galactic rim. It also depends on whether you start from a point in one of the spiral arms and what direction you go (out of the ecliptic, directly out or spiral out using the galactic rotation to "boost" you out)..

Answer 2

Escape velocity is when you reach 0 energy (I'm having fun today) so the kinetic energy (positive) has to equal the gravitational energy (negative),

1/2 m v^2 = G m M / R
or
v = Sqrt ( 2 G M / R)

here M is the mass of the galaxy and R is the radious of the galaxy and it all assumes that you start at the edge of the galaxy. If you want the escape velocity from the position of the earth, that's a much more complicted calculation (M would be the mass inside the R, except that as you move out, R increases and M increases too)

-jose-

Answer 3

From what?
The galaxy is moving as part of the expanding universe, so it is, in a sense, "escaping" but may eventually "fall back" to a central point.
If you mean "to escape from our galaxy, how fast must you go?" then the answer is "depends". Voyager travels fairly slowly, but is now in the Oort Cloud of outer cometary bodies, I believe, and still on course to escape from our solar system. Barring mishap, it could conceivably escape our arm of the Milky Way, even at it's pokey speed. This might occur sometime after the sun has gone nova (2-3 billion years from now).
Gravitation is a key factor, and depends (in a galaxy) on the course you chart. But at currently possible speeds (even with constant acceleration from an ionic engine or laser engine of some description), it would take hundreds of thousands of years to reach a point where you might consider yourself to have "escaped" the Milky Way.
The mind boggles, but infinity will do that to ya.

Answer 4

Neither. Why could you think of that the two become happening? we are in simple terms in orbit around the galactic center, in simple terms like the Earth is in orbit around the solar, and could be any further. nicely, a minimum of for yet another few billion years till Andromeda and the Milky way collide and screw each little thing up. in case you opt to nicely known approximately what's protecting galaxies mutually you're able to desire to be Googling dark count. of direction you nevertheless won't discover plenty on it because of the fact it quite is surprisingly plenty nevertheless a secret. Roger, Andromeda is two Million easy years away, even though it quite is not heading in direction of us on the fee of sunshine. The collision remains Billions of years away.

Answer 5

Probably the speed of light.

Answer 6

Relative to what?