The sun runs 7 billion kilometers every year. Why is the position of the stars in the Milky Way still the same?
In the universe, no matter can be static forever, and all celestial bodies are inseparable from motion. Our sun moves 7 billion kilometers in the universe with eight planets every year. What is the concept of the revolution of the major planets in the solar system? The sun flew past Pluto in less than a year, without breathing in the middle. And our probe flew from Earth to Pluto for a full 10 years before reaching Pluto. If we humans had this speed, we would have left the solar system long ago. Flying across the solar system, the sun is like this, and so are other stars, so why do we see the stars in the same position? The Big Dipper, as always, pointed north. Have you ever thought that maybe millions of years ago, the Big Dipper didn't point north, and the stars we saw with "Grandma Lucy" were different. The starry sky we see is different from that seen by ancient apes . Compared with the revolution of the planets in the solar system, the revolution of the sun itself is very magnificent. Its revolution speed exceeds that of any of the eight planets, and the period is also calculated in units of hundreds of millions of years. The third cosmic speed calculated according to the universal gravitational force is 16.7 km/s, which represents the minimum speed to leave the solar system. The human probe Voyager 1 has to be accelerated by Jupiter's gravity to reach it. But the revolution speed of the sun can easily reach 220 km/s. The sun also revolves around Neptune, the planet with the longest orbital period. Its year is 164.8 Earth years. Of course, if it is a little longer, you can count the delisted Pluto, and 1 Pluto year = 247.94 Earth years. A year of the sun, that is, it takes about 2.7 earth years for one revolution, that is to say, the last time the sun was here, it was in the Permian period, and no dinosaurs appeared. According to this revolution speed, the sun travels a distance of 7 billion kilometers in a year, which is equivalent to the distance from the sun to the Kuiper belt. So the question is, we revolve around the sun, so who revolves around the sun? The Earth 270 million years ago had a massive black hole in the center of the Milky Way where the sun is located, which is called "galactic black hole" in astronomy, also called Sagittarius A*. So don't look at the beauty of the Milky Way, its heart is really "black", and it is very "black", with a mass of more than 4 million suns, and the sun revolves under its gravitational force. In people's impression, a black hole is a devouring monster, it will absorb all the matter close to it, even light cannot escape. Will our sun one day be swallowed by this Sagittarius A*? Sagittarius A* The answer is yes, the sun is approaching the black hole of the galactic center, but before all this happens, the sun itself has finished its entire life and has become a white dwarf. When it was finally engulfed, there was no solar system, only a tombstone of the sun existed. Almost all the stars in the Milky Way are controlled by the gravitational force of the galactic center black hole, and it is impossible for them to escape the Milky Way, just as the Earth cannot escape from the solar system. Since the positions of the stars in the Milky Way are changing, why do the stars we see remain the same in the sky at night? Medieval astrological charts are still available today. Constellation diagramThe positions of the stars
The stars of the Milky Way are revolving like the sun, and they move billions of kilometers every year. Why are the positions of these stars? hasn't changed? It is true that 7 billion kilometers is a large number, but putting this distance into space is really not worth mentioning. This is like two ants crawling on a piece of paper. They are crawling hard, but from the perspective of people on the side, they can't even get out of the edge of the paper. These two ants are invasive species, and humans flew them back to their home in South America. For the ant, it will never be possible for the ant to crawl back to South America from Asia on its own. Taking the analogy of two tiny ants, the sun and other stars are these two ants, and no matter how they move, they are within the scope of a piece of paper, and the earth is the universe to them. Therefore, it is not that the positions of the stars remain the same, but that this change is nothing compared to the universe, not to mention the observation of the human eye. If you want to see the position change with the naked eye, you need to wait tens or millions of years, but can a person's lifespan wait patiently until that day? Obviously it is impossible, so the change of position cannot be observed for hundreds of years, so the astrological map of the Middle Ages can also be used now. A person's lifespan is limited. If you want to see a change in the position of a star, you may have to observe it from the time when humans were born more than 2 million years ago. At that time, there might not be some constellations today. In addition, although the stars are orbiting the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, these orbits are not chaotic and will maintain their corresponding positions for a short period of time. Note that this short time is for the revolution period of a star, not a short time in the human sense. Hundreds and thousands of years are a very short time for a star. For human beings, there are several millions. The revolution period of the sun is too long, about 270 million years, not to mention human beings. There are several species whose history has been rivaled for such a long time. This is like a human being can see the phases of the moon all month on the earth. If you want to see the changes of other stars on the sun, it will take 270 million years to see all other star phases. To put it bluntly, the lifespan of human beings is too short, and the movement distance of the sun is too short in the universe, all of which are caused by too short. However, the wisdom of human beings is infinite. Our lifespan cannot be observed, but it can predict the changes of millions or even hundreds of millions of years in the future. Astronomers at the Observatory can continuously observe the same star, write its motion data into a program, and simulate its future motion through a computer. For example, humans have simulated that the Big Dipper will become the "North Shovel" in 100,000 years. Similarly, the Big Dipper star 100,000 years ago can also be simulated using a computer program. At that time, the Tianshu star in the Big Dipper part was far away from the second Tianxuan star, and was located diagonally above the fourth Tianquan star. , the shape is not "bucket". What the Big Dipper looks like now However, astronomers have discovered that some stars in the night sky are indeed dimmer than before. In 2015, the Swedish National Astronomical Observatory used a telescope to observe the direction of the Lupus constellation and took a photo. After comparing the photo of the same position in 2007, it was found that one star was missing. This is reminiscent of the engulfment of black holes, after all, the revolution of our sun is driven by black holes. Disappearing stars in the same areaBlack holes of the Milky Way
Black holes are the death forms of supermassive stars. Our galaxy has more than 100 billion stars, and of course they have Big and small. Astronomers infer from models of stellar evolution that there are more than 10 million black holes in the Milky Way, and there may even be hundreds of millions. The mass of Sagittarius A* is not the largest among the black holes discovered so far. On the contrary, it appears to be relatively small. For example, the M87 black hole, which is 55 million light-years away from us, has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun, and our Milky Way has a diameter of 200,000 light-years. It is impossible for only one black hole to exist. There is a conjecture about the black hole of the M87 galaxy that there may be more than one black hole at the galactic center, but a group of black holes, and Sagittarius A* is only one of them. I believe that many people are worried about one thing, that is, the black hole will swallow the solar system. This worry is not unreasonable. Theoretically, the number of black holes in the Milky Way is more than 100 million, but the number of black holes discovered by humans so far is less than a fraction of this data. Black holes also move, and humans don’t yet know their trajectories. For example, our galactic center black hole also has its own revolution. There are even wandering black holes in the universe, such as the wandering black hole SDSSJ0927+2943, which is 600 million times the size of the sun and drifts at a speed of more than 9 million kilometers per hour. What would happen if black holes roamed into the Milky Way during the process of photographing them? Scientists can't predict exactly. The oldest black hole in the universe, ULas J1120 +0641, is about 13.7 billion years old. It is believed to be the first black hole in the universe. In short, black holes are far more complex than people think, and they are even divided into many types, such as rotating and non-rotating, charged and uncharged. We still know very little about black holes. In 2022, NASA released a recording of the sound of a black hole swallowing a nebula, because the composition of the nebula is gas, forming a thin medium around the black hole that can transmit sound.