How many times has the Sun orbited the Milky Way?

From Earth, the Milky Way Galaxy appears to be a separate entity from our planet but we are constantly moving through its middle. (Image source: Abdel Aziz via Getty Images)

It can be difficult to comprehend the fact that the Earth is moving through space. But it’s strange to realize that you are making two trips simultaneously the sun through milky way.

Just as the Moon orbits the Earth and our planet orbits the Sun, our star also orbits the Milky Way Galaxy – or, more accurately, orbits the Sun. A supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. In fact, the entire Milky Way is constantly orbiting the core of our galaxy’s black hole.

Exactly how many times we have Solar System Orbiting the core of a giant black hole in the Milky Way? The answer is not as easy as it may seem at first glance.

Compared with The orbits of the planets around the sunOur parent star’s path through the Milky Way is inconceivably longer and less stable, making it difficult to count how many times we’ve orbited the galactic center.

Using simple mathematics can reveal how long it currently takes the solar system to cross our galaxy, which in turn can provide a good estimate of how many times our cosmic neighbors have made the trip. But providing a more accurate answer is difficult.

Related: How many atoms are there in the visible universe?

Image of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, captured by the Event Horizon telescope.

Everything in the Milky Way revolves around the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. (Image credit: EHT Collaboration)

The Sun and the rest of the solar system are currently traveling through our galaxy at about 448,000 mph (720,000 km/h), according to our sister site Live Science. Space.com website. This sounds incredibly fast, but some stars in the Milky Way, known as hypervelocity stars, are crossing the galaxy At speeds of up to 5.1 million mph (8.2 million km/h).

At the current speed of the sun, it is It takes about 230 million years For our star to complete one trip around the Milky Way. This is longer than Dinosaurs walked the earth And more than 750 times longer than Humans (Homo sapiens) and I found it.

The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old, and the Earth formed about 100 million years later, according to Reuters. Planetary Society. This means that if the Sun’s orbital path had remained constant all this time, it would have completed about 20 trips across our galaxy, and the Earth would have been swept away on about 98% of those trips.

However, the Sun’s orbit did not remain constant throughout its lifetime. Instead, our star has likely moved slightly since it first formed.

“The sun may not have been born where we find it now.” Victor DiBattistaThe astrophysicist at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK who specializes in galactic evolution told Live Science. Alternatively, our star might have been born near the center of the Milky Way, he added.

We are currently located about 26,100 light-years from the center of the galaxy. But the mineralogy or chemistry of our Sun indicates that it was born about 16,300 light-years from the galactic core. This outward motion is known as “radial migration,” which involves stars being pushed along the spiral arms of galaxies like the Milky Way by the momentum of the rotating limbs — kind of like “how a surfer rides a wave,” DiBattista said.

When the Sun was born, its orbital cycle was much shorter. DiBattista said it likely took our star about 125 million years to complete the round trip. He added that as the Sun migrated outward, its rotation period increased, but it likely took billions of years to move to its current location.

This means that the Sun has shot through the Milky Way more times than our previous estimates indicate, although by how much is unclear.

Radial migration occurs for many other stars as well. “Nearly half of the stars in the solar zone are thought to have been born elsewhere [and been pushed outward]DiBattista said. The farther away we are from the center of the Milky Way, the greater the proportion of stars that have migrated outward.

It is now believed that the Sun is in a fairly stable orbit around our galaxy. But there is a possibility that he has not finished moving completely.

DiBattista said it is “certainly possible” that the sun will continue to migrate outward. “However, it is impossible to predict how much.”