Galactic Year Simulation

[scott17]

My friend and I performed a few calculations based on the galactic year that are interesting.

Based on the galactic year, (the time it takes our sun to orbit the galaxy once), 225 million years, we came up with the following data.

Imagine a model of our Sun, with the Earth orbiting it at 22,500 RPM. Pretty fast. Based on this assumption, it would take one week, 168 hours, for the Sun to complete its journey around the galaxy.

Remember, the Earth is orbiting the Sun at 22,500 RPM this entire time.

We broke it down a little further. To simulate a 50 year span of time with this model, the Sun only moves on it's one week path for 134 milliseconds.

I have way too much time on my hands, or maybe not enough.

 

[Pano]

134 milliseconds, perhaps?


Put another way, human existence dates back about 8 galactic days. That's not too shabby.

 

[FullRangeMan]

I fell our sun or any other star dont orbit this galaxy(a too large and populated area), but there is no way to know it, unless wait zillions of years to know to calc the route.

 

[scott17]

How about another "monkey wrench in the works", to state the vernacular. We (the Earth) don't orbit around the sun in an ellipse at all. Since the Sun is orbiting the galaxy, our orbit is actually a spiral.

 

[SY]

How about another "monkey wrench in the works", to state the vernacular. We (the Earth) don't orbit around the sun in an ellipse at all. Since the Sun is orbiting the galaxy, our orbit is actually a spiral.

With respect to one set of coordinates based on the center of the Milky Way, yes. But the galaxies move, space expands, and if you take a different set of coordinates (say, from the center of ULAS J1120+0641), you get a different shape.

 

[scott17]

What shape would that be?

With respect to one set of coordinates based on the center of the Milky Way, yes. But the galaxies move, space expands, and if you take a different set of coordinates (say, from the center of ULAS J1120+0641), you get a different shape.

 

[tvrgeek]

I fell our sun or any other star dont orbit this galaxy(a too large and populated area), but there is no way to know it, unless wait zillions of years to know to calc the route.

Fortunately, we understand the basics of motion and gravity. Some guy named Newton helped us with that. So we don't need to wait a few zillion years to see if we moved. Aristotle was good at understanding only by reason. We can do a little better 2400 years later.

We are also fortunate not to have to wait zillions of years as our universe is only 13.75 billion years old unless you believe in the literal interpretation of various scriptures. Then it is a bit younger.

 

[SY]

What shape would that be?

A very distorted spiral-ish shape, like a Slinky that's been yanked hard, then run over by a truck.