The sun is literally having zero part in this. We would still circle around the galaxy in the same way without her. Only orbits would change a bit.
Really? We’re pretty far from galactic center, if we didn’t have the Gas Giants wouldn’t Earth eventually escape galactic orbit with it’s low relative mass?
No. The moon wouldn’t suddenly book it either if the sun disappeared, would it? Or more in line with the example: the moon would not suddenly leave the solar system if the earth disappeared.
Mama knows how we behave. She’s taking us to the nearest galactic playground where she’ll abandon us.
Uhhm guyss shes just taking us around the galaxy
and where is the galaxy taking us then?
To visit/fistfight the Andromeda galaxy.
to the Great Attractor
Through a series of peculiar velocity tests, astrophysicists found that the Milky Way was moving in the direction of the constellation of Centaurus at about 600 km/s. [citation needed] Then, the discovery of cosmic microwave background (CMB) dipoles was used to reflect the motion of the Local Group of galaxies towards the Great Attractor.[8] The 1980s brought many discoveries about the Great Attractor, such as the fact that the Milky Way is not the only galaxy impacted. Approximately 400 elliptical galaxies are moving toward the Great Attractor beyond the Zone of Avoidance caused by the Milky Way galaxy light.
We’re actually traveling with a lot of friends through the immeasurable heavens.
The Great Attractor is actually a giant construct to escape the universe. https://xeelee.fandom.com/wiki/Bolder's_Ring
Oh god now there’s a new thing I want to read
I’ll try spinning! that’s a good trick!
Not sure I like the sound of that.
It’s ok, the universe is expanding faster than the Milky Way can be attracted.
We’re not so sure of that, weren’t there new observations that show the rate of expansion is slowing down? I know a paper was posted here a while back and it was getting some criticism but the authors stuck by their data.
but it’s so attractive
To the Andromeda Galaxy
Andromeda and Milky way might marry each other and become one flesh and one soul like Jesus Christ intended it to be.
And we either won’t be invited to the wedding or we will be left behind at the wedding venue.
(When the two galaxies merge we either won’t notice it except seeing the stars dancing in the night’s sky or the planets of our solar system will be flung out of orbit and turning Earth into a rogue planet.)
Earth might go on to start a whole new life in some new place just like my dad.
Fun fact, the two galaxie’s outer dust clouds are already touching.
😳
Another fun fact, they might miss each other.
Sun: “Hey, do you want toooo… go for a walk?”
Planets: go apeshit
Based on how Earth is doing, she might be taking us to the big farm upstate. :(
IDK sometimes it feels like everything is just gonna explode one day
Did everyone forget about the galaxy? It’s also a giant circle, and the sun orbits it like we orbit the sun.
Perhaps the real question should be “Where is the Galaxy taking us?”
“Where is the Galaxy taking us?”
Towards the andromeda galaxy which is over twice the size of the Milky Way. We are hurtling towards each other at about a quarter millions miles per hour.
For thousands of years after you die, that little fuzzy spot near Cassiopeia will slowly get larger and larger in the sky, and in about a four billion years, long after the Earth’s oceans have dried up and the sun is a giant, reddish monster hovering in the sky, and our magnetic field will have long since died out, our atmosphere will have been mostly stripped away and the weather will feel like being on the highest mountains in an oven, the night sky will be covered with a dazzling display of the Andromeda galaxy overhead, spiral arms visible with the naked eye stretching from horizon to horizon.
We will merge, in a series of passes through each other, with almost no stars actually colliding most likely, although a good number will be ejected into the emptiness of intergalactic space, and will finally settle into a new shape, and may trigger a new phase of star formation as new clouds of gas and dust collide and collapse in the new super-galaxy.
But you’re still coming in to work, right?
Not if it’s Thursday. I work from home Thursday
The Milky way and Andromeda may not collide.
Interesting article but it’s sad to see that website using dark patterns like subscribe popups and fucking with the back button.
I don’t know between the firewall, pihole and ublock I don’t see ads anywhere, not even the amazon ads.
Oh no you zoomed out to far and triggered the weird sensation. How bizarre it all is!! To know these things as little ape creatures. So small as to barely exist in a lake of space and an ocean of time. Whywhywhyhowwhyhowhowhow is any of this real???
You’re also made of 30-trillion little microscopic machines with vastly more complexity each than even the most fantastic clockwork we’ve ever devised, that are each working in harmony with each other, creating a vast machine that is continually breaking itself apart and rebuilding itself from parts of its environment as it moves through time and space.
And somehow you can breath either manually or automatically without breaking a stride.
So what you’re saying is, we’re all just REALLY good factorio runs
Knowing there’s no chance imaginable of being able to witness all this is so depressing… My death anxiety feeds on thoughts like this.
On the plus side, we live at a time where we can still observe the cosmic microwave background radiation and total solar eclipses.
Since the moon’s orbit grows by 3" every year, after a few million years it’ll be far enough away that it won’t completely eclipse the sun anymore.
And in a billion year’s time, the CMB will be redshifted so far into deep radio wavelengths that it’ll be impossible to observe
First thank you for filling in OP’s coverup of Mama’s intentions.
We will merge, in a series of passes through each other, with almost no stars actually colliding
So then, we’re just going for a ride to a farm upstate :(
Fun fact, we do not just orbit the galaxy in a circle, we also have a motion perpendicular to that circle. We oscillate up and down through the plane of the Milky Way. The Milky Way is super thin, like super ultra thin. If the Milky Way were a pancake, it would only be the thickness of a sheet of paper, a sad pancake indeed. However in terms of human scales it is still huge, so we have a large way to travel. Our galactic orbit is tilted as compared to the galactic plane, so throughout the cosmic year we move up and down as compared to the center. A motion of 100-200 light year, so pretty big. That orbit also has procession, so we move through different parts.
The galaxy itself is also moving, although at that scale it’s easier to think of the galaxy to be stationary and other galaxies moving towards or away from us. In general we are all moving towards a galaxy cluster known as “The Great Attractor” as it is the most massive (except for your mom).
It’s also often forgotten that our sun isn’t the only star moving in the galaxy. All of the stars orbit the galaxy in a lot of different orbits. And some don’t orbit at all, instead moving with escape velocity (or faster) to get flung outside of our galaxy. Some have their own orbit in companion dwarf galaxies that in turn orbit our own galaxy. It’s easy to think of a galaxy as a fixed thing, with all the stars in the same place moving together like on a disk. But this isn’t the case at all, stars aren’t bound together and can follow their own path. Over time their relative positions change and the constellations we know won’t exist anymore.
The structures we see in galaxies like spiral arms for example are only structures in the same way a wave in the ocean is a structure. It is clearly a thing that exists, with properties we can at least somewhat constrain (like size for example). But the water inside that wave is just water like everywhere else. At one point it’s part of the wave and then at some point it no longer is. It’s the same for stars, sometimes part of a structure, other times not (although it gets complicated quickly if you dig into the details)
That’s called a crepe and they are DELICIOUS.
Praise skycrepe
As far as I know we’re headed toward another galaxy. Luckily we’ll all by long gone by the time that collision happens.
The galaxy is taking us to see its friend
Now do the local group and super clusters! The universe is wild!
And like all good mothers one day she will grow into a red giant, engulfing her children and obliterating all life on earth.
That is the true meaning of mothers day ❤️
Wait a minute… We’re moving?
Always have been.
Fun, fun, we skip along together!
Swirling towards the center…
Where there is no pain and we are truly together, forever.
…
Eat at Arby’s
May I have a point of reference?
Edit: in all seriousness, looking for the point of poignancy
There was a twitter account that went by nihilistic arby’s and they posted stuff like this.
Thanks! Also, like your usrname :)
burma shave
I saw that once and thought that it was an actual jingle for an Arby’s commercial x_x
ok! time for all those years of science to finally pay off:
Would you still love “her” if you knew that, every single second, thousands of waves of extreme radiation from the Sun, traveling at a million light-years per millisecond, hits our planet’s atmosphere? These waves slowly erode one of the only protections that we have against the Sun. But don’t worry, this planet has several more tricks up – and under – the crust of the Earth. The iron core of the earth emits a geomagnetic field that extends into space, creating a region called the magnetosphere. This magnetosphere blocks most of the Sun’s deadly rays, deflecting them back into space.
(also I didn’t get this off of Google. I just have a really good memory. also I added the bolded words)
traveling at a million light-years per millisecond
You’re only off by a factor of about 30 quadrillion.
Light (famously a type of radiation), takes 1 year to travel a light-year, hence the name.
If you want to make it sound impressive, then astronomical units aren’t the right choice. The sun is only 1 AU away from us after all.
Ok. Wasn’t trying to make it sound impressive, just trying to say that the sun is sharting radiation at us.
A million lightmicroseconds every second
Fixed that for them
million light-years per millisecond
Gonna need a citation on that one! ;)
kidding aside, Mars is a great example of what will happen to Earth should our core stop generating our magnetic field. Also… Auroras!
Yes! The Auroras are the result of the Sun’s rays that were rebounded and sent to both of the poles. Also, I don’t know the exact speed, but its really reeeeeaaaaalyyyyy fucking fast. Like, my brain can’t even fathom how fast it is. I can’t imagine the scientists that study this every single day think. Are they like “oh shit the sun is just about to shart some deadly fucking radiation time to do some science to make it stop” I am actually convinced that science is magic, and every scientist that ever lived had to say some oath to never tell people that they’re wizards. Meanwhile we’re like “oh ok they have this tool that looks like a medieval torture device they either must be really smart or stole that from a museum or time-traveled and yoinked that shit and brought it back here”
Um, yes because without those waves plants wouldn’t grow and we wouldn’t be alive.
If those deadly rays are getting reflected back into space, how do astronauts protect themselves against it? Is the ISS beneath the magnetosphere?
On the side of the Earth facing the sun, the magnetosphere extends about 40,000km into space. On the side facing away from the sun, the solar wind stretches the magnetosphere into a tail that extends well beyond the Moon’s orbit. The ISS orbits at an altitude of about 400km; it is well within the magnetosphere.
Because it is above the majority of the atmosphere (and also because it just barely passes through the lowest part of the Van Allen radiation belts), astronauts in the ISS are exposed to higher levels of radiation. However, the ISS has shielding specifically designed to minimize radiation, and astronauts living there are considered to be within safe levels of exposure.
I don’t know. science, I guess?
I mean its kinda terrifying when you think about it from the perspective of someone who grew up in an abusive household
“You will never leave my control”
Either you get tossed to the curb by mom and you are cold and alone after being so used to the warmth and the plant is dead (flung out of orbit), or get murdered by her (red giant… engulf the system)
There’s a third option, but it may still lead to option 1 eventually. We invent starlifting, and keep our sun “young,” while also having the added benefit of strapping a solar thrusters to her so we can steer the solar system.
User name checks out
The fun stops when you find out about Sagittarius A.
Not necessarily. I like to think I’m pretty resilient.
It’s my understanding that the specific direction on this relative motion graphic is just made-up, but it does do a good job of reminding people that we’re orbiting the galactic center.
I’d love to know what the actual direction currently looks like though
AFAIK, the problem is that we don’t even know with certsinty the shape of the universe. Let alone find out anything outside our own cosmos…
That’s not Mama, that’s our son!
It’s all oscillations.
