#Bestof2021: 2/2: The local arm of the Milky Way and our Sun's place in it for now. Ken Croswell, The Lives of Stars. (Originally posted October 4, 2021)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 1 September 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/40/e2116185118
"We live in a giant barred spiral galaxy. The Milky Way’s fast-spinning disk of stars and gas whips up spiral arms that spawn new suns, while a bar of mostly older stars cuts through its heart. From afar, our galaxy likely resembles a glowing cosmic hurricane:." Ken Croswell
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS, I'm the World, I'm John Batsuit, Dr. Ken Croswell. |
| 0:09.6 | He is reporting for the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, new thinking |
| 0:15.0 | about our beautiful spiral galaxy, the Milky Way. |
| 0:18.7 | Yes, it's true we're headed to Andromeda, which is also a beautiful galaxy. |
| 0:23.2 | We're going to merge, but right now the revelations about our galaxy include our place |
| 0:29.1 | in it. |
| 0:30.1 | The Sun. |
| 0:31.1 | We're going around, it's going to take to earn 30 million years, but in the meantime we're |
| 0:34.7 | a part of a local arm, which is constantly being upgraded. |
| 0:38.6 | Ken, how is it that they now know the local arm extends? |
| 0:42.1 | What do you report? |
| 0:43.1 | 26,000 light years? |
| 0:44.1 | How did this discovery get made? |
| 0:47.2 | What does it mean? |
| 0:49.2 | Well, it's a good deal longer than a lot of people had thought. |
| 0:52.8 | 26,000 light years is approximately the same distance between the Sun and the galaxy |
| 0:57.6 | center. |
| 0:58.6 | It's a substantial distance, and it could be longer than that, you know, 26,000 is really |
| 1:03.5 | just the minimum. |
| 1:04.8 | In terms of how we learned that, it was these major parallaxes that established that certain |
| 1:11.4 | stellar nurseries, certain young stars that had been thought to be in the Perseus arm, |
| 1:15.6 | which is the next arm outward, actually were closer and were part of the local arm instead. |
... |
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