The Milky Way

[dispatcher812]

I tried to do a search but did not come up with anything so here goes.

I am reading the Q Continum: Q space. It talks about going to the Gallatic Barrier. I know what it is but what confused me was the it is around the Milky Way. I looked up a map of the MW and did not realize how big it was. I thought that just our Planets were in the Milky Way. I can't wrap my head around the size. My question is I have seen pictures like this http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030310.html of the "Pinwheel Gallexy." So that means in the Trek Universe, this Pinwheel gallexy would fall OUTSIDE the Gallatic Barrier?

Thanks, Kevin

 

[C.E. Evans]

That's another Galaxy altogether.

Within our own Galaxy, our Sun is just one of billions and billions of stars. And there are also billions and billions of galaxies too.

 

[Christopher]

Uhh, yes, all the galaxies outside our own galaxy would, by definition, be outside the Galactic Barrier. Galaxies are large clusters of stars and gas with large stretches of empty space between them, like islands in an ocean. The Milky Way is our name for the spiral galaxy we inhabit, one of the two large spiral galaxies in the Local Group of galaxies (the other being Andromeda). Our galaxy contains several hundred billion stars, most of which probably have planets.

It is a difficult thing to wrap one's head around the scale of the universe, but this site might help:

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/

It's a series of maps that start with just the nearest stars to our own Sun and then progressively "zoom" outward to the scale of the galaxy and beyond, all the way out to the limits of the observable universe.

So why do we call our galaxy the Milky Way? Because that was the ancient Romans' name for the pale, milky-white band of light that crosses the night sky. The Greeks called it galaxias kyklos, the Milky Circle, because it forms a band around the whole sky. We now know that band of light to be the light of the stars of the galactic disk as seen from inside it. Which is, of course, where we got the word "galaxy" from in the first place. Once we figured out that the galaxias kyklos was the light of a big bunch o' stars we were stuck in the middle of, we decided to call that big bunch o' stars the Galaxy. And then, later, we figured out that the "spiral nebulae" we saw in the sky, like Andromeda and the Pinwheel, were actually much further away than the stars of the Galaxy, so the Galaxy had to be just one of multiple "island universes" separated by empty space. So Galaxy became galaxy, a term for a category of things rather than a single entity. So the big bunch o' stars we inhabit is now called the Milky Way Galaxy, which literally means the Milky Way Milky. Mmm... milk. Now if only dark matter turned out to be made of something that could be given a cookie-related name...

 

[RoJoHen]

So that means in the Trek Universe, this Pinwheel gallexy would fall OUTSIDE the Gallatic Barrier?

Yes.

"Our planets" that surround the sun form our solar system. There are billions of star systems like this in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Between galaxies, there is a whole lot of empty space.

 

[dispatcher812]

That's another Galaxy altogether.

Within our own Galaxy, our Sun is just one of billions and billions of stars. And there are also billions and billions of galaxies too.

See that is what confuses me. Gallaxies in the gallaxy. But thanks for the info. I have always been awstruck by space and now even more so.

 

[T'Girl]

It talks about going to the Gallatic Barrier

I alway figured that instead of traveling all the way out to the rim of the galaxy, they would simply travel either "up." or "down" to reach the nearest edge. Call it about twelve hundred light years.

 

[RoJoHen]

That's another Galaxy altogether.

Within our own Galaxy, our Sun is just one of billions and billions of stars. And there are also billions and billions of galaxies too.

See that is what confuses me. Gallaxies in the gallaxy. But thanks for the info. I have always been awstruck by space and now even more so.

Galaxies do not exist within galaxies...unless they collide with one another.

In the grand scale of the entire universe, galaxies are actually quite small.

It goes like this:

The Universe is everything.
Inside the universe, there are galaxies.
Inside those galaxies, there are stars.
Around some of those stars, there are planets.

 

[sojourner]

Space is... REALLY big.

 

[dispatcher812]

I like this. Thanks guys for your help.

 

[Sci]

Or, to put it in reverse:

You live on a planet called Earth.

Earth is part of a group of planets that orbit a star called the Sun. That group of planets is called the Solar System. Other stars also have orbiting planets of their own.

Sun is part of a large group of stars that cluster together in a spiral formation, forming a galaxy. This particular galaxy is called the Milky Way.

Just as there are multiple stars with orbiting planets, there are multiple galaxies.

All of Star Trek, and in fact most science fiction stories set in outer space, take place within the confines of a single galaxy. Star Trek is all set in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Space, however, is so big that even the space between stars that are close to one-another is pretty much impossible to comprehend on an intuitive level. The nearest star is about 4 light-years (the distance a beam of light travels in one year) away. The Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000-120,000 light-years in diameter.

 

[Christopher]

Or, we could just let Mr. Eric Idle tell the tale:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44DlSj6bnn4

Star Trek is all set in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Except for bits of TOS: "By Any Other Name," TOS: "Is There in Truth No Beauty" (maybe), and TNG: "Where No One Has Gone Before."

 

[Timewalker]

So the big bunch o' stars we inhabit is now called the Milky Way Galaxy, which literally means the Milky Way Milky. Mmm... milk. Now if only dark matter turned out to be made of something that could be given a cookie-related name...

I usually joke that dark matter is made up of all the single socks that have been lost over the course of human existence (I daresay they were getting lost even before the invention of washers and dryers). But who knows - dark matter could be made of chocolate... or a clever Star Trek novelist could figure out something in a cute sub-plot in a future book...

See that is what confuses me. Gallaxies in the gallaxy. But thanks for the info. I have always been awstruck by space and now even more so.

You are in dire need of a basic astronomy class. Or a book. Have you ever been to a planetarium? Is there an astronomy club in your city/town? If so, please seek out these resources. If you think you're awestruck now, just wait until you really understand what you're looking at!

For example, I look up at Vega and marvel that it's so close (~26 light years), which means in terms of time/distance, it's like looking at it in real time. The light that left Vega that we see tonight is only 26 years old - that's within my own lifetime!

 

[Navigator_NCC2120]

On a whim today, I did a Google search for tonalities, like those heard in the film "Forbidden Planet".

I found this video called "Harmonics of Frequency Modulation - Lost in Space".

You may want to listen to it while you scan "An Atlas of The Universe" website.

Here is another one, called "Resolving Ambient Sequences", it remindes me of the music/tonalities heard in the "Space: 1999" Season 1 episode "Black Sun". The music/tonalities occur in Act 4 when the moon passes through a black hole and 2 of the main characters (Commander John Koenig and Prof. Victor Bergman) have a metaphysical experience.

By the way our Sun's name is Sol, hence Solar System.


Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente
/\

 

[sojourner]

^That was such a non sequitir for a moment I thought you were a spam bot.

 

[Admiral Shran]

Everybody lives on a street in a city
Or a village or a town for what it's worth.
And they're all inside a country which is part of a continent
That sits upon a planet known as Earth.
And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains
Which is out there spinning silently in space.
And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals
And also the entire human race.

It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It's big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It's a big universe and we're not.

And we're part of a vast interplanetary system
Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.
With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth's the only one
That has life on it, although we could be wrong.
Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids
Including meteors and Halley's Comet too.
And there's over fifty moons floating out there like balloons
In a panoramic trillion-mile view.

And still it's all a speck amid a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
It's sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other
And still that's just a fraction of the way.
'Cause there's a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky
Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.
And still the universe extends to a place that never ends
Which is maybe just inside a little jar!

It's a great big universe
And we're all really puny
We're just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
Though we don't know how it got here
We're an important part here
It's a big universe and it's ours!

 

[Maurice]

Or
The Earth orbits a star (the Sun)
Vast numbers of suns in a discrete group are galaxies
A collection of galaxies is a group or cluster
A vast collection of clusters and groups is a supercluster
(The existence of structures larger than superclusters is debated)
The Universe is everything...unless there actually is a multiverse.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Yet, despite the endless vastness of the galaxy, fans still get mad that neither Kirk nor Picard ever bumped into a Suliban or Xindi....

 

[Christopher]

Admiral Shran, assuming you didn't write those lyrics yourself, could you please tell us who wrote them and what they're from?

 

[C.E. Evans]

That's another Galaxy altogether.

Within our own Galaxy, our Sun is just one of billions and billions of stars. And there are also billions and billions of galaxies too.

See that is what confuses me. Gallaxies in the gallaxy. But thanks for the info. I have always been awstruck by space and now even more so.

Our Galaxy is like a grain of sand in the even larger Universe.

But even with all that, our Galaxy is still a pretty enormous place all by itself. And when you consider that it stretches in all directions from Earth, and is orbited by some 150+ globular clusters (nearby mini-galaxies containing thousands to millions of stars each), our Galaxy seems even bigger.

 

[Skywalker]

Admiral Shran, assuming you didn't write those lyrics yourself, could you please tell us who wrote them and what they're from?

I don't know who exactly wrote the lyrics, but the song is from Animaniacs.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_J5rBxeTIk[/yt]