A Brief Review of The Milky way and our Place Within It

A Cup of Identity Crisis

What can be used to define an individual? Do we possess a uniqueness that separates us from others or
are we simply part of a collective? A question such as this is bound to lead to an existential crisis when
dwelled upon, as the sheer scale of the society around us compared to our mere individual self is a
daunting yet intriguing prospect. When comparing the tiny to the colossal the difference simply becomes
too wide to express without labelling individuals as collectives. However, if we are to consider things on
the astronomical scale, how should we define ourselves? What can we consider ourselves as in comparison
to the universe whilst remaining being distinctive? Let’s start simple, let’s distinguish our Solar System
from The Milky Way.

Figure 1: Hubble Telescope image of the Messier 101, a spiral galaxy that resembles our Milky Way
[6]

We Can Go Bigger…
To start things off, I could just simply tell you where we are in a single sentence like an everyday address
used on Earth. This however wouldn’t be very useful, whilst you may know where we are in terms of a tidy
line of words comprehending our location requires much more than this, lets first review the sizes used to
distinguish our universe.
Our Solar System is one of hundreds of billions of solar systems bound together under the influence of
gravity into a Spiral Galaxy known as the Milky Way (Figure 1). This gravity works through the principal of
masses being attracted to one and the attraction increases when the respective masses are greater. The
Milky Way can be imagined to be a solar system but on a much larger scale, instead of orbiting planets we
have orbiting suns and their respective solar system. In terms of size the Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light
years wide, meaning it takes 100,000 years for light to reach from one side to another [1], compared to the
11 light hours for our Solar System, the Milky Way is extremely large and due to this the distance of our
solar system to other nearby stars is also very large.
From here we will take another step back and gain a rough view of a portion of the observable universe in
terms of galaxies to broaden our perspective. There are other galaxies out there with varying shapes and
sizes. Our nearest neighbouring galaxy, The Andromeda galaxy, is 2.9 million light years away from us [2]
and along with the 50 other galaxies that are considered ‘close’ to us we form the Local Group, which
roughly spans 10 million light years in diameter. Our Local Group then forms a Supercluster named
Laniakea, which means “spacious heaven” in Hawaiian, and contains roughly 100,000 galaxies [3] making it
250 million light years wide. From here onwards with another 10 million superclusters we have the
observable universe which spans 93 billion light years [4]. As we can see the universe is extremely large
compared to our tiny Solar System. Hence, we will only focus on distinguishing ourselves from our own
galaxy.
Galaxies are classified into four types: Spiral, Lenticular, Elliptical, and Irregular. A spiral galaxy is
characterised by their central bulge and thin disk (Figure 2) with spiral arms that swirl outwards and are
seamlessly joined from the centre to the outer regions (Figure 1). As The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy the
other types won’t really be discussed deeply other than how Lenticular galaxies are essentially Spiral
galaxies but without the spiral arms. Elliptical galaxies stars orbits are random and elongated leading to the
galaxy’s elliptical shape and Irregular galaxies are simply galaxies that do not fit into any of the described
types [5].

Figure 2: NGC 4565 “Needle Galaxy” a Spiral Galaxy viewed edge [13]
Somewhere in the Milky Way
As the Milky Way is a Spiral Galaxy it too has the distinctive central bulge and flat outer disk with arms
linking the two together. Where does our solar system lie in terms of this? We orbit the galactical centre at
the distance of 26,000 light years [6] which places us roughly in the inner section of the disk if viewed face
on. It is due to this placement we see more stars in the Southern Hemisphere at night with a naked eye, as
in this direction our line-of-sight crosses through more stars (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Sketch explaining why certain areas of the sky contain more stars

To further pinpoint our location, we must understand the different regions within the Milky Way and what
to expect from them. As stated before, the Milky Way has a central bulge along with a flat disk extending
from it when viewed side on. this flatness is due to the rotation of the galaxy, similar to how a solar system
has a plane of orbit, stars orbit in a single plane and direction. However, unlike the solar system there is no
distinctive massive central object for all the stars to orbit around, despite this we still orbit the galactical
centre as it is the galaxy’s centre of mass. Think of this as an overall attraction from all the other masses
(stars) around us in the galaxy that results in an attractive force to the centre [7].
Due to this attraction of masses, stars tend to clump together when orbiting the galactical centre. A central
bar exists due to this principal and forms a bar like clump of stars and gas that rotates at the galactical
centre. Similarly in the disk, stars clump together to from spiral arms that orbit the centre (Figure 4). Our
Solar System is located near the edge of a minor arm called the Orion Cygnus Arm and is sandwiched
between the two primary arms, Perseus, and Sagittarius [8]. Additionally, the plane of planetary orbit of
the solar system do not orbit in the plane of the galaxy and is tilted at around 63 degrees. So, in some
sense our Solar System is essentially surfing on wave interstellar gas that is 9,000 light-years long and 400
light-years wide whilst being oriented sideways partially [9].
 Figure 4: Artist’s concept of our Milky Way galaxy labelled regions [8]

A Future of Nothing?
Now that we know where we are and our surroundings in the Milky Way will this change as time
progresses? The answer is not much would change. Even after our Sun burns out and extinguishes our
solar system would remain unchanged as everything outside the Solar System is very far away with our
nearest star, Proxima Centauri, being 4.244 light years away so our chance of hitting another star is
virtually zero [10]. It may sound a little bit lonely and that makes sense since unlike most stars in the
universe The Sun is a solitary star and has no partner.
If we rule out the chances of suddenly encountering a stray black hole the only foreseeable event that can
disrupt our place in the Milky Way is the collision with the Andromeda galaxy estimated to occur in 5
billion years [11]. Despite being 2.9 million light years away the Andromeda galaxy is approaching us due to
the dark matter between us exerting a gravitational pull. In the event of the collision (Figure 5), it is
unlikely that our Solar System itself would undergo any drastic changes. What is likely to happen is that we
will be displaced from our orbit in the Milky Way, and are likely to either end up in a new orbit in the newly
merged galaxy or escape the gravitational pull of the galaxy in the merging process and become a rogue
solar system that drifts in the intergalactic void, the region of space that exists between galaxies [12].
Figure 5: Illustration of the fated merge of our Milky Way galaxy with the Andromeda galaxy [12]

A Brief Solution
So, in Summary the Universe is very big and we, The Solar System, compared to it is insignificantly small.
We can find ourselves in the context of the Milky Way and we are surfing on wave interstellar gas called
the Orion Cygnus Arm that is sandwiched between the Perseus, and Sagittarius arms. Our likely fate is to
remain unchanged in position until the fated collision with the Andromeda galaxy in 5 billion years in which
we will either be cannonballed into the abyss or restabilise in a new orbit in the merged galaxy.
This here is a very brief explanation to our proposed question and whilst the answer is now explained there
is still a lot of concepts to be covered in between. If we wish to truly comprehend our place within the
Milky Way, we will still need to understand how the formations of galaxies and press further on the
galactical events such as the merging galaxies, which alters a galaxy’s behaviour. To understand such
things, we must look beyond the Milky Way and observe the other galaxies to gain an understanding of the
stages of galaxy development and how differing factors can cause them to vary. But at the very least, we
now have a grasp of where we are our own galaxy. With this we should be able to understand ourselves a
little bit better on the galactical scale.
References

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