My textbook is not very good and the answers I need are confusing me. I have been reading the same text for 2 hours now and have gotten nowhere. A website would help as well if the question stumps you, too.
Describe the position and motion of our soloar system in our galaxy and the overall scale, structure, and age of the universe.
2007-01-10 17:40:33 · 3 answers · asked by go.mighty.moshin.emo.rangers 1 in Education & Reference ➔ Homework Help
Our solar system is moving in a wave patern trough the galaxcy. What this means is we are moving through the disc (the densest part of the galaxcy) pausing a little on either side and then swining back to the other side (up, down, up, down, etc.).
This is happening while we are still travelling around in the one of the spiral arms of the milky way with the rest of our spinning galaxcy. Try thinking of water going down a plug hole, if there was a piece of dirt caught in the spinning water it would go around with it.
However we don't get closer to the galactic core like that piece of dirt would because we have the balance of the 'centrifical force' (yes I know it is not a true force) and the gravitaional pull of the galactic core.
As for the structure of the universe, it is a lose knit colection of galaxcies, some in clusters like ours and some on thier own. If you think of when a artillary shell explodes on the ground and how everything is thrown out, if you were able to stop everything just before it fell to the ground and had a look at it it would look like the universe does now. Each piece of debris would be a galaxcy, although the real universe has many many many more galaxies than your simple explosition.
As far as we can tell at the moment the galaxcies are like island of matter in a realtivly empty universe (solid visible matter that is).
As for the scale and age all I can say is it's bigger than you can possibly imagine (the galaxcy is 100 thousand light years across which means light takes 100 thousand years to travel from end to end it travelling at 300 thousand kilometers per hour [24 times around the earth in one second through space] and the universe is quite possibly billons of light years across) and we have not been able to pin down a date for the big bang but it is somewhere in the order of 14.6 trillion years ago. The dinosaurs went extinct only a hew hundred million years ago.
Hope this helps.
2007-01-10 18:11:05 · answer #1 · answered by Arthur N 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Our solar system is kind of on the beginning of the outside third of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is a relatively flat (like a record) spiraling out Galaxy. The universe is made up of clusters of visible matter that make up only a small percentage of what scientist's believe to be all that is out there. I think age estimates range from 12 to 18 billion years (this constantly varies and changes with discoveries and opinions) .. and the scale is beyond anything that our minds can comprehend..Not to mention current speculation that there may be 12+ dimensions to boot.. try not to think about it, it even makes very smart peoples brains hurt.. good luck.
2007-01-10 17:56:43 · answer #2 · answered by the_buccaru 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Picture the tip of a pin. That is earth. Picture an eraser, that is the sun. Picture a large sphere that could enclose a car, that is the solar system. Then picture the earth-that is the universe. NASA's website would help.
2007-01-10 17:51:05 · answer #3 · answered by curiositycat 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋