How many light years are we from the edge of our solor system, Galaxy and Universe?

Question

Exactly as per question

Answer 1

This is really hard to answer. We can only see as far as 14 billion light-years, because of the speed of light. The universe might be much larger than we can see. Distances in the solar system and galaxies are only estimates. Try www.wikipedia.com

Answer 2

Well the distance to the observable Universe is 15 billion light years which means it will take 15 billion years traveling at the speed of light to reach the edge of the Universe that we can see. That doesn’t take into account that the Universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate every second and the part of the Universe that we can’t see is also expanding. No one knows how much of the Universe we can’t see. We’re just guessing at this point.

Answer 3

From the edge of the solar system (if we consider the Oort Cloud as the edge of the solar system): about 1 light year.
From the edge of the galaxy: depends on which edge, we are located closer to one edge than the other. We are about 25,000 light years from the centre, and the galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter, so we are about 25,000 light years from the closer edge and 75,000 light years from the farther edge.

There is no "edge" of the universe, so there is no way to measure that distance. Scientists estimate that the diameter of the universe (from our perspective) is 93 billion light years.

Answer 4

Exactly? Nobody knows exactly.

Firstly, where does the Solar System end? The furthest planet, Neptune is only Light HOURS. But the Solar System is believed to extend to 1 light year where the Oort cloud of comets extends to (still just a theory).

Form the edge of the Galaxy - maybe 20,000 light years. Again, nobody knows the precise edge of the galaxy.

From the farthest reaches of the universe that we know of - 14 billion lt years.

Answer 5

We are located 28,000 light years from the Galactic center. And we r are about 50 AU away from the edge of our solar system (assuming kaiper belt)and universe!...its not possible

Answer 6

Jan Oort predicted that the centre of our universe is in the constellation of Sagittarius if you interested. Probably determined that by there being more stars in that area of space as we're on the suburbs.

Answer 7

First we are not light years from the edge of our Solar System, our solar system is the edge of the planets, asteroids, comets and dust that orbit the sun, called Sol, hence the name SOLar system.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system
"The solar wind is believed to surrender to the interstellar medium at roughly four times Pluto's distance. However, the Sun's Roche sphere, the effective range of its gravitational influence, is believed to extend up to a thousand times farther."

Pluto is approximately (29.658 340 67 AU) 2,756,921,611 miles from the sun so 4 times that is 10.8 billion miles; meaning that the radius of the Solar System is 10.8 billion miles in radius. (Earth is at 1 Astronomical Unit (AU) from the sun and that is a distance of 93 million miles. This puts us at 107,07 million miles from the edge of the Solar System at its closest point.)

A light year is 5,879,000,000,000 miles or 5,879 billion miles, which is quite larger than the radius of the solar system, about 533.11 times larger.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
“The main disk of the galaxy is about 80,000 to 100,000 light-years in diameter.”
Which would mean 40,000 to 50,000 light years in radius or 235,160,000,000,000,000 miles to 293,950,000,000,000,000 miles in radius. Let’s switch to scientific notation; 235,160 X 10^12 miles to 293,950 X 10^12 miles. Boy that is still a huge number; which is why the light year was invented.

“The distance from the Sun to the galactic center is now estimated at 26,000 ± 1400 light-years.”

The Andromeda Galaxy is approximately 2.5 million light-years away, but don’t worry it is getting closer. In fact it is on a collision course with the Milky Way, but the Sun will have been a cold dark white dwarf (that happens in about 7 billion years) for a very long time before that happens.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang
The universe is 13.7 billion years old. Since the speed of light is a constant and a limit that means the universe could only be 13.7 billion light years wide. Of course the Observable Limit of the Universe is smaller since the speed of light is a limit and we haven’t been around long enough for the light from 13.7 billion light years to get here yet. Don’t worry though that limit to is expanding every year (by 1 light year of course).

As for our distance to the edge of the Universe that is harder to explain. We don’t know of any real center of the universe, because we don’t know where the big bang really got its start. The Universe is expanding and according to the Hubble Constant it is expanding away from us in at a uniform speed.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_constant
“The most recent calculation of the proportionality constant, using the satellite WMAP began in 2003, yielding a value of 71 ± 4 (km/s)/Mpc. In August, 2006, a less accurate figure was obtained independently using data from NASA's orbital Chandra X-ray Observatory: 77 (km/s)/Mpc with an uncertainty of ± 15%.” NOTE: Mpc = Million Parsecs = million parsecs (approximately 3,262,000 ly or 2x10^19 miles).

The size of the universe is huge and it is growing every larger and thanks to dark energy that speed is increasing. As for the center of the universe being in the Sagittarius, that is actually where the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_%28constellation%29).

According to the accepted theory there is no real center of the universe it sort of expands equally and against each other, which seems strange. Probably there is a center of the universe be we need to be at a location very far away to check the Hubble Constant there to triangulate the center of the Universe. We can’t do that in your grandchildren’s grandchild’s lifetime so I don’t expect an answer very soon. For now science assumes there is no center to the universe, it is expanding at a uniform rate from everywhere.

Past the 13.7 billion light years edge of the universe should be empty space. Since that is part of the Total Universe that means the Total Universe is endless and has no edge, our distance from the center or edge would be a meaningless mess of numbers that would be incorrect; it just doesn’t matter.

These distances are measured in the 4D space that we know, according to Einstein there were at least 11 dimensions, but according to current String Theory there are at least 20 dimensions. Since we can only understand the 4 dimensions that we were build to live in and understand (length, width, depth, and time) we can’t understand the higher dimensions and have no idea what is going on there. One theory of gravity says that it may be a force expressed from a higher dimension, which is why we are having so much trouble understanding it. Our understanding of gravity is pretty much the same as that of the cave men. Galileo ran experiments with it, and Newton defined the laws of it, but we don’t know what makes it, how it is made, how fast it travels or anything else about it.

---Finally your answer is:
- Earth is 1.82122810001e-11 ly from the edge of the Solar System or 0.000,000,001812 ly
- Earth is 26,000 ± 1400 ly from the center of the Galaxy
- Earth is an at most 6.85 ly from the center of the Universe, but it is an infinite distance from the center of the Total Universe (assuming that the Universe or the Total Universe has a center, which currently is assumed to NOT have a center).

Just a reminder to those who don’t know (and there are a lot of them)
A solar system is a collection of planets around 1-3 stars that all orbit around a common center.
A galaxy is a collection of stars that orbit around a common center.
A universe is the total of all objects created since the big bang 13.7 billion years ago.
The Total Universe is all of the Universe plus the empty space beyond it.

Answer 8

How is it possible for the universe to have no edges but have a diameter?

Answer 9

A whole bunch.