r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/StemCellPirate • 13h ago

Video Earth’s evolution measured in galactic years.

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25

u/sjayvee 12h ago

I feel so stupid.. the sun has an orbit?!

4

u/sussydestroyer 12h ago

Everything in the universe orbits something bigger than itself

6

u/Truestorydreams 12h ago

So that means the sun is orbiting around the centre of the milky way?

3

u/Tight-Temperature670 12h ago

Yeah dude, there's a super massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy

2

u/wiltony 12h ago

Yep

3

u/Sweet-Explorer-7619 12h ago

Soo, what does the milky way orbit?

2

u/bardukasan 12h ago

Super duper black hole

2

u/snapplesauce1 12h ago

The galaxies orbit each other mutually as mass clusters in a point of balance as they travel thru space. Milky Way and Andromeda are in a spin with each other as they are closest to each other. But they're all spinning around each other instead of a larger central mass.

2

u/PantsLobbyist 12h ago

That’s a question with a bit of a longer answer. More-or-less, nothing. The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy (along with the Local Group) “orbit” a shared centre of mass (they all orbit one another). We will eventually collide with the Andromeda Galaxy. Beyond this, as part of two superclusters (Virgo and Laniakea) we are all drifting toward the Great Attractor which itself is drifting toward the Shapely Supercluster. Unlike our circumstances with respect to Andromeda, due to universal expansion (dark matter keeps us accelerating at a rate which overcomes gravity), we shouldn’t ever reach the Shapely Supercluster. So while we’re being pulled toward it, we’re actually moving away from it.

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u/SleepyTester 12h ago

Andromeda in the first instance, though they are more pulling toward each other than orbiting. Then the Local Group, a fifty-galaxy neighbourhood, then the Virgo cluster, then the Laniakea supercluster.

After that probably some larger cluster, I'm not sure where it ends

1

u/hereforyebeer 12h ago

Sagittarius A- a supermassive black hole about 4 million times greater than the mass of our sun.

The Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies have some gravitational relationship with each other and are actually on a collision course towards one another!

We’re also a part of the Virgo Supercluster, so we got that going for us.

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u/sussydestroyer 11h ago

Yes, and the milky way also orbits around other clusters of galaxies and their center of mass/gravity.

This is how galaxies merge.