Earth and space questions...?

Question

Theres a few for me to ask, that made my science teacher go 'woah!'. He said that i had thought wayy to deeply...
The first and main question:

If the earth and planets orbit the sun, and the sun is a star- does that mean round all the other stars are orbiting planets...and other 'earths'? [planets with life]

Second of all
I saw a photo of the Milky Way. How did they get that...no-ones traveled that far into space right? But then it was probably satellites. So does that mean theres other 'Milky Way's' out there?

Third Question.
In the nucleus of the Milky Way there is lots of old dull stars.
Does that mean that the sun will also become dull, and die, therefore killing all life on Earth?

Forth question.
Does the universe end? What does the edge look like? I came up with a silly idea that it might be a mirror. And if the edge were a mirror, that wouldnt mean they would be 100 000's of planets but half of that...as they are reflected off teh mirrors.

Another mad theory [more mad then the mirror one].
What if our universe was just this sort of bubble or toy..and we were dolls or experimental humans some crazy scientist made? That this mad professor lives on the REAL world, and we, sat reading this question, are just some replica.
[Like that dome off that Jim Carey film: The Truman Show].

Is this at all possible? doubt it, but i wanted to tell you this idea and had to put in some form of a question.

Whoops! Question two was a bit pointless as i knew the answer.

You can leave it out.
I dont really need answers now.. got all the knowledge i need :)
Enjoy the questions though.

Answer 1

1) no
2) don't know
3) yes
4) yes

Answer 2

1 We know there's other stars with planets around them, but probably not all stars have planets. While no other 'earth's' have been found, some feel it's likely, given the number of other planets we've found (more than 120 today.)
2 Any photo you've seen of the Milky Way can only be taken inside it. You've probably seen photos of the other galaxies, most likely Andromeda, all of which are very far away. There are some fine computer-generated likenesses of the Milky Way, but no true photos taken *outside* the disk.
3 The sun will eventually use up all it's hydrogen fuel, and die. It'll first become a Red Giant, and consume Mercury, Venus and Earth, and roast Mars... After the "giant" phase ends, it'll become a red dwarf, then cool off - and eventually die.
4. There's probably no definable 'place' where the universe begins or ends; and who would've built such a large mirror?

Answer 3

1. There are certainly billions of stars in the universe with many billions of planets orbiting them. Whether these planets have life or not is THE big question. If you believe the universe is infinite and has existed for an infinite amount then it is more and more likely that some of these planets will have some kind of life on them.

2. Satellites have gone the edge of our galaxy and beyond and have sent back picture.

3. Our sun will become incredibly massive and consume all the planets and beyond in an incredible inferno as it lives out its last gasps before it becomes dull and dies. It will swell up to millions of times larger than the earth and eat up the planets in its path. It will eventually die down to a dull, dead mass of stellar material incredibly dense or it may even create a black hole is it implodes. It may well then drift towards the centre of the Milky Way under the attraction of an increasingly more massive Super Black Hole.

4. Does the Universe end? No one really knows. It's almost like religion in as much as it depends on which theory you believe; is the universe expanding forever, has it reached it's limit already and about to start contracting; is it already contracting? A great deal of data and brain power has gone into proving and disproving all theories. The fact is, no one knows for sure and no one can prove any particular theory for sure.

Your idea about mirrors is beautiful and would account for some of the amount of matter that seems to be missing from the universe. There is simply not enough matter in the universe to account for it's estimated density so may be there are mirrors! It is delightful idea and just the kind of thinking that sparks great ideas and theories. You obviously have the kind of imagination that can comprehend more than is seen just in front of your nose and that is the substance of genius. Keep studying and above all keep thinking. Maybe you could tell me why gravity is soooooo weak. Consider the mass of the earth. If I drop a paper clip on the floor, I can retrieve it with a fridge magnet quite easily. If attraction works as classically taught, the mass of the earth should hold the paper clip to the floor like a lead weight, but it doesn't. Why? I have written this over a period of an hour with lots of interuptions from my kids asking me questions. I love it. Keep asking questions. Never stop being amazed.

Answer 4

They have recently found other planets orbiting stars (if that's what you mean) but they don't think these are capable of supporting the sort of life we know as the planets appear to be gas giants.

They can't take a photo of the milky way - you would have seen a photo of another similar galaxy. You can see our milky way though in the night sky (I can see it where I live as I have little light polution). This is because the Earth is one one of the outer spiral arms and we are looking back into the centre of it so it looks like the edge of a flat spiral dish.

Eventually the sun will expand until it is a white giant then collapse in on itself into red dwarf (or so they think). This will happen in millions of years' time though.

Nobody knows about the end of the universe!

Keep asking those questions. You have an active and inquisitive mind and it is because of people like you that discoveries are made. You should study philosophy.

Answer 5

1) It now seems that most stars have planets. There are probably around a trillion planets in the Milky Way. At least one has life---how many is not known.

2) There are no photos of the Milky Way from outside, but there are photos of galaxies that are similar to the Milky Way, based on extensive astronomical studies. We can, of course, photograph the Milky Way from inside. Since we are fairly far from the center, a wide-field view looks a lot like a picture of an outside, edge-on galaxy.

3) The Sun will become slowly brighter over the next few billion years. Then it will expand out to become a Red Giant. Then it will become a White Dwarf.

4) The edge of "our" Universe is our event horizon, 40 billion lightyears away. It looks like glowing hot gas from the Big Bang (at radio frequencies), surrounding us equally in all directions, because it is highly redshifted. The Universe may or may not be infinite.

Answer 6

NO, some suns have planets and others don't (there are over one hundred known planets in other solar systems, but there may not be life on any of them)

It either wasn't a photo of the milky way, but rather an artistic composition, or a photo of a galaxy that (like the Milky way) is a spiral so could be closely campared to our own.

Yes, the suns life expectancy is somewhere around another 7 billion years

Unknown whether the universe ends or just keeps going I doubt we (mankind) will ever know.

Your silly ideas are just some of the silly ones I have ever heard, there are so many suppositions and no way to know the truth that every one of them has to be looked at with some measure of respect, so keep dreaming :)

Answer 7

1. Some stars have other planets orbiting them - but not all - and so far we haven't discovered another one with life - as to if there are any, well that's one of the great questions of life right now!

2. This one I don't know - I'm pretty sure that nothing from earth as gotten that far as it's 1000's of light years (which is like millions of bazillions of miles!)

3. Yeah, one day - 1000s of years from now the sun will run out of fuel and this solar system is done!

4. No one really knows this one either - but most popular theory's say that the universe is expanding - and there for must have an edge as some point. As for what is there there's lots of debate, You're idea is probably as valid as any other right now - but I think the main two are that if you leave one side of the universe, you come back in the other side - or that at the edge of the universe is just the end of all matter in space, and after that space continues forever, with nothing at all in it.

Answer 8

1) Not all other stars have planets orbitting them, and not all of thos planets are "Earth-like".

2) The photos of the Milky Way and any other galaxy are taken either by orbitting sattelite telescopes such as the Hubble or by ground based telescope. So yes, there are lots of other galaxies out there, billions of them!

3) The sun will indeed one day die, but that day is a very long time away.

4) We simply don't know the answer to that one, the universe could be infinite or it could have an end.

Answer 9

1) A number of other stars are known to have planets orbiting them, and we suppose that most if not all stars do have planets.

2) We see it from the inside. It looks like a band of light circling he sky.

3) The Sun will eventually die, and so will Earth, in billions of years.

4) There is no edge to the universe. But the universe is believed not to be infinitely large either. Just as the Earth's surface is not infinite but has no edge either.

Answer 10

My theory of the universe is based on the big bang and big crunch theorys...

Some sort of enegy was spinning around in nohtingness for a while until all of a sunnden that force started to develop physical matter, then after a few billion years or so it developed into a large engery sort of ball thing, then all of a sudden there was no where for this enngery to be stored so it exploded thus creating the big bang, then after a few billion or trillion years the expanding matter in the universe (only the matter, the actually blackness of the universe would have always been there) started to to slow down, the centre of this drew it back in with some sort of gravitational force at the same rate as the expanditure, then it all slamed back into the middle, then exploded out again... i supose this would be happening for quadrillions of years.. perhaps.. just a theory.. lol

Answer 11

in truth, i would agree with your teacher. you watch too many movies, and you have a deep sense of where you DON'T belong.

question 1: that would be a no. all the planets in this solar system orbit the sun. but, in your question, it also depends on gravitational pull.

question 2: they got the picture from the Hubble Telescope. Its basically a super high resolution camera that has long shutter times and wide aperature values. that picture you see could have left the shutter system open on the Telescope for quite some time. remember that light still requires time to arrive to earth. like 8 mins from the sun as i seem to recall.

question 3: yes. we are all doomed to die one day. either natural death, or the death of our star, the Sun. the sun is the source of life on earth. without it, there is no heat, we will freeze to death. without it, there is no light, so plants will die and animals will starve and therefore we will ultimately starve to death as well due to shortage of food.

question 4: the universe is estimated to be 98% uncharted anyway. so however the case, there is a whole lot of space to explore and there will be a whole lot of losing your way around space as well. as for the mirrors part, stop watching fictional movies as it happens to make your teacher nervous, and you are starting to make me nervous too.

and your final question, if we are test bed animals, the first thing i would do is to kill myself. imagine myself being flimed for the entire country to watch. thats embarrassing. literally.