Sage-Tips

Has anyone gone outside the Milky Way?

“We think we have a strong argument, and this process is how science works.” Possible orbits of the planet candidate in the M51 (“Whirlpool”) galaxy. The transit method is how most exoplanets are found in our own Milky Way galaxy.

Will the Voyager escape the Milky Way?

It is doubtful that the spacecraft will ever be able to leave the Milky Way, as they would have to attain a velocity of 1000 kilometers/second, and unless they get a huge, huge, huge velocity boost from something unexpected, they will probably end up being in the Milky Way’s rotation forever.

Can we see beyond the Milky Way?

The answer is no – unless you count seeing the combined light of many billions of stars. From the Northern Hemisphere, the only galaxy outside our Milky Way that’s easily visible to the eye is the great galaxy in the constellation Andromeda, also known as M31. This is the edgewise view into our own Milky Way galaxy.

How many years would it take to travel out of the Milky Way?

The disk of our home galaxy – the Milky Way – is bigger than we previously thought. A new study shows it would take 200,000 years for a spaceship traveling at the speed of light to go across the entire galaxy.

Is there a black hole outside the Milky Way?

Astronomers have found a smaller, stellar-mass black hole lurking in a nearby satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. The black hole has been hiding in a star cluster named NGC 1850, which is one of the brightest star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Will Voyager 1 leave the universe?

Engineers expect each spacecraft to continue operating at least one science instrument until around 2025. The two Voyager spacecraft could remain in the range of the Deep Space Network through about 2036, depending on how much power the spacecraft still have to transmit a signal back to Earth.

Is the Milky Way galaxy dying?

Actually, the Milky Way may have died at least once around 7 billion years ago; it revived after a period of 2 billion years, during which a whole bunch of stars died, going supernova and ejecting their outer envelopes into space, filling the galaxy with material for making new stars.

Can a star exist outside a galaxy?

Although stars cannot form in the voids between galaxies (since the density of matter is far too low), there are in fact large numbers of ‘intergalactic stars’. It has been estimated, for example, that 10 per cent of the mass of the Virgo galaxy cluster is in the form of these stellar interlopers.

Can We really explore the universe?

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, of galaxy cluster LCDS-0829. If you peer out into the depths of space — at the vast expanse of stars, galaxies, and even the leftover glow from the Big Bang itself — you might think that if humanity can understand the laws of nature and create a good enough technology, there are no limits to what we can explore.

Will humans ever travel to other parts of the Galaxy?

The idea that humans will eventually travel to and inhabit other parts of our galaxy was well expressed by the early Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who wrote, “Earth is humanity’s cradle, but you’re not meant to stay in your cradle forever.”

Is it humanity’s destiny to go into the Galaxy?

But in the century since this vision was proposed, things we have learned about the universe and ourselves combine to suggest that moving out into the galaxy may not be humanity’s destiny after all.

Is the universe waiting for you to discover it?

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. This article is more than 5 years old. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, of galaxy cluster LCDS-0829.