Milky Way

This is framework for my mods

Used in Nice Research Tab

Do you know that our galaxy is called the Milky Way?

The Milky Way is a 13.6 billion year old spiral galaxy containing 100 to 400 billion stars. Its flat disk spans about 100 000 light years* in diameter, with the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A at its very center. Our Solar System is located on the periphery of this structure, within the inner edge of the Orion Arm.

The Milky Way itself rushes through space and is currently approaching the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy :) In about 4-5 billion years, this movement will lead to their inevitable collision and merger into a single giant system.

*A light-year is a unit of distance, not time. It is the distance that light travels in one vacuum year, which is about 9.46 trillion kilometers (5.88 trillion miles).

Do you really grasp the true scale of space?

To put it into perspective, lets take the worlds fastest jet, which boasts a record speed of 3 529 km/h (fast, isn't it?) and fly it straight to our nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Covering that mind boggling distance of 40 trillion kilometers at maximum speed without stopping would take about 1.3 million years. To put that in context, this nonstop supersonic flight would last longer than our entire biological species has existed on Earth.