Sol's Place In Space

One of the key pieces of information discussed with reference to the 2012 subject (2012ology) is a long anticipated alignment with the galactic centre, that is, with the very core of the Milky Way galactic star system. Unless you happen to be an astronomer it is likely that this statement makes the whole event about as clear as freshly churned mud. Some will have familiarised themselves with the details of this already, certainly any serious scholar of 2012 data will have done so. For the sake of casual readers and those new to the topic let me regale you with my recent astronomical re-education brought about largely by studying an excellent (and expensive) astronomy and cosmology book called simply, ‘Astronomica’.

The basis of the 2012 alignment as discussed in relation to this website comes from a synergy of several astronomical phenomena and events. Here I provide you with a  quick basic background to all relevant astronomy. To start with we recall that Earth circles the star called Sol (hence ‘Solar’ system), Sol is a star out on  the so called ‘Local’ or ‘Orion’ arm of a Spiral type Galaxy named The Milky Way. For sake of general interest lets include also the dimensions of our Galaxy, it is around 100,000 light years in diameter (excluding the atomic hydrogen gas and dark matter) and includes some 100 billion stars.

Thanks initially to viewing other galaxies of the same type it became clear that spiral arm galaxies had at their centre a bulge. Looking up into our night sky in the right location at the right time confirms that we to have such a bulge, and that we are indeed looking edge on at a galactic disk. For those in the Southern hemisphere this is all the more clearly seen. Comparative studies show that this bulge is indeed the centre of a spiral galaxy, and has itself a number of unique phenomena associated to it that should be explained here for a better understanding of our cosmic position.

The sun although currently out in one of the spiral arms, is however not attached to it, we are passing through only as we circle the core of our galaxy at the admirable speed of 135 miles per second. Taking into account our distance from the hub, which is 28,000 light years, we can calculate that one complete orbit of the solar system takes 230 million years.

Turning our eyes, and indeed advanced radio telescopes, inward toward the core we see there is a band of darkness strung along the central galactic plane, this is known as the Great Rift, and these dust clouds will later cause us some problems in our observations. Zooming in further we see the  Spherical Halo that makes up our  earlier witnessed bulge, it incorporates several globular clusters of stars as well as the major star birthing clouds of the Milky Way, these form a kind of shell about the true central core (interestingly unlike the rest of the stars in the galaxy which all orbit in the same direction, the stars here move in various directions). Lets not be deceived into visualising an empty shell however as there is more to be discovered within.

Finally we come to the core itself, long obscured from even the mightiest telescoped due to those dense clouds around it. Thanks though to advanced infrared detection we have discovered that the core is slightly peanut shaped, with a central bar of extremely ancient stars acting like a central column about which all else turns, residing within ionised molecular gas, a structure known as the 3-5 kilo parsec ring. There is at the nucleus a cluster of millions of these very ancient stars. The observed velocity of this star cluster has lead to the understanding that they are being interacted upon by a black hole with the mass of four million stars!

Black holes are one of the most fascinating  phenomena in the known Universe. For those not familiar with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, it states that when huge mass is compressed into small space the normal dimensions of space become warped. At that point nothing can escape, not even light, with no light we of course have no visibility of the object. This results in a so called black hole, a type of quantum singularity into which everything about it is drawn by incredibly intense gravitational forces. A star significantly larger than our own can in its final stages become a black hole with intense gravitational pull, therefore the forces involved in a black hole of four million solar mass is rather mind boggling. The black hole can be thought of rather like the plug hole about which water spins as it exit’s a bathtub. Fortunately we are not being rapidly pulled into our own plug hole, the distances involved seem to allow relative balance for the surrounding stars.

Hopefully this has laid the foundations of a better appreciation of our place within the Universe and the mechanism’s of the cosmos that surround us and indeed lead our very existence. Most importantly now when someone mutters something about an alignment with the galactic centre we will immediately know just what the centre of the galaxy is ‘all about’.