• Question: I recently watched a video, which informed me about the solar system. If the solar system is just a tiny dot in the Milky Way, how can all the planets and stars fit in the Milky Way, especially with the fact the Milky Way is just ONE of over 100,000 galaxies?

    Asked by Belle to Rob, Martin, Martin, James, Elizabeth on 10 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: James Coombs OBrien

      James Coombs OBrien answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      That’s a very good question.

      It’s because of size. Planets and other space stuff that fill our solar system are big, really big, but the solar system is even bigger and the Milky Way even bigger than that. It is hard to get your head around at first but the shear size of the Milky Way means that it is able to fit our solar system (as well as others) inside it.

      To put some numbers on it…
      Our solar system is less than 1 light year across
      The Milky Way is between 100,000 – 120,000 light years across
      The Universe is unmeasurable, we just don’t have a number it is that big.

      Just so you know a light year is about 6,000,000,000,000 miles (very large)

      So to sum up, the universe is really big! I must admit that as soon as you start thinking about it it is impossible not to be amazed.

    • Photo: Martin Wieczysty

      Martin Wieczysty answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      The best theory we have got is that the universe is infinite – it has no size, it just keeps on going (and expanding). I find it difficult to understand, but that is possibly because I am a human in the UK – who thinks going to New Zealand is a huge journey.
      Our nearest star system (Alpha Centauri) is 4.37 lightyears away.
      We even came up with the term lightyear as a measure of distance because everything is so spaced out that it would take ages to write down the number of miles to the nearest galaxy :
      1 light year is about 6 trillion miles.

    • Photo: Elizabeth Cooper

      Elizabeth Cooper answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      The universe is all existing matter and space. The size of the whole universe is not known and may be infinite.

      The milky way is about 100,000 light years across.
      The distance to the outer most planet Pluto in our solar system is about 13 light hours. This just shows you how big the milky way!

    • Photo: Martin Ward

      Martin Ward answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      As everyone has mentioned, it is all about the size of things – this is very difficult to picture in our heads because we are not used to thinking about things that are SO HUGE.

      It may help you to take a look at the link here>> http://htwins.net/scale2/

      This page has a slider bar that you can use to gradually look at bigger and bigger things – this might help to get an idea of just how HUGE and MASSIVE our galaxy and the universe is!

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