• Question: what is a galaxy?

    Asked by jakenffc to Anne, Carolyn, Joe, Mariana, Nick on 16 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joseph Devlin

      Joseph Devlin answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      A very plain, but highly delicious chocolate bar.

    • Photo: Carolyn McGettigan

      Carolyn McGettigan answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Wow, an astrophysics question for a neuroscientist! Eeek.

      I went to Wikipedia:
      “A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter.”

      All I could say myself is that a galaxy contains many solar systems, and that the universe contains many galaxies…

      I’ll bet there’s some folks in the other zones who could give you a much better answer to this question!

    • Photo: Nick Bradshaw

      Nick Bradshaw answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Its either a tasty chocolate bar or a large collection of stars (anywhere from millions to trillians of them) that because of their gravity have ended up clumped together.

    • Photo: Mariana Vargas

      Mariana Vargas answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      A galaxy is a collection of stars, like our Milky Way, bound together by the force of gravity. They come in all shapes and sizes, some small others huge, some nearly as old as the universe and others very young. The Milky Way is a type of galaxy called a spiral, and is quite normal as galaxies go.

    • Photo: Anne Seawright

      Anne Seawright answered on 18 Mar 2010:

      A galaxy is a system of stars and dust that all orbits round a centre of mass.

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