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Mama! (mander.xyz)
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[-] Zwiebel@feddit.org 97 points 1 month ago

Uhhm guyss shes just taking us around the galaxy

[-] shneancy@lemmy.world 53 points 1 month ago

and where is the galaxy taking us then?

[-] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 75 points 1 month ago

To visit/fistfight the Andromeda galaxy.

[-] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 49 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

to the Great Attractor

Through a series of peculiar velocity tests, astrophysicists found that the Milky Way was moving in the direction of the constellation of Centaurus at about 600 km/s. [citation needed] Then, the discovery of cosmic microwave background (CMB) dipoles was used to reflect the motion of the Local Group of galaxies towards the Great Attractor.[8] The 1980s brought many discoveries about the Great Attractor, such as the fact that the Milky Way is not the only galaxy impacted. Approximately 400 elliptical galaxies are moving toward the Great Attractor beyond the Zone of Avoidance caused by the Milky Way galaxy light.

We're actually traveling with a lot of friends through the immeasurable heavens.

[-] SlackerPreface57@feddit.online 9 points 1 month ago

The Great Attractor is actually a giant construct to escape the universe. https://xeelee.fandom.com/wiki/Bolder%27s_Ring

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[-] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Not sure I like the sound of that.

[-] metallic_z3r0@infosec.pub 8 points 1 month ago

It's ok, the universe is expanding faster than the Milky Way can be attracted.

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[-] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 6 points 1 month ago

but it's so attractive

[-] FilthyShrooms@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago
[-] Una@europe.pub 12 points 1 month ago

Andromeda and Milky way might marry each other and become one flesh and one soul like Jesus Christ intended it to be.

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[-] 0ops@piefed.zip 70 points 1 month ago

Sun: "Hey, do you want toooo... go for a walk?"

Planets: go apeshit

[-] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago

Based on how Earth is doing, she might be taking us to the big farm upstate. :(

[-] flying_sheep@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 month ago

Earth is fine, it's seen worse than humanity. Geology doesn't care about what biology does.

[-] Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago

We can make it care, just got to tell old donny up in the whitehouse that something doesn't care about his wishes.

[-] Noite_Etion@lemmy.world 47 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

And like all good mothers one day she will grow into a red giant, engulfing her children and obliterating all life on earth.

That is the true meaning of mothers day ❤️

[-] ZombieMantis@lemmy.world 42 points 1 month ago

Did everyone forget about the galaxy? It's also a giant circle, and the sun orbits it like we orbit the sun.

Perhaps the real question should be "Where is the Galaxy taking us?"

[-] ameancow@lemmy.world 46 points 1 month ago

“Where is the Galaxy taking us?”

Towards the andromeda galaxy which is over twice the size of the Milky Way. We are hurtling towards each other at about a quarter millions miles per hour.

For thousands of years after you die, that little fuzzy spot near Cassiopeia will slowly get larger and larger in the sky, and in about a four billion years, long after the Earth's oceans have dried up and the sun is a giant, reddish monster hovering in the sky, and our magnetic field will have long since died out, our atmosphere will have been mostly stripped away and the weather will feel like being on the highest mountains in an oven, the night sky will be covered with a dazzling display of the Andromeda galaxy overhead, spiral arms visible with the naked eye stretching from horizon to horizon.

We will merge, in a series of passes through each other, with almost no stars actually colliding most likely, although a good number will be ejected into the emptiness of intergalactic space, and will finally settle into a new shape, and may trigger a new phase of star formation as new clouds of gas and dust collide and collapse in the new super-galaxy.

[-] rmuk@feddit.uk 28 points 1 month ago

But you're still coming in to work, right?

[-] wibble@reddthat.com 8 points 1 month ago

Not if it's Thursday. I work from home Thursday

[-] Unbecredible@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 month ago

Oh no you zoomed out to far and triggered the weird sensation. How bizarre it all is!! To know these things as little ape creatures. So small as to barely exist in a lake of space and an ocean of time. Whywhywhyhowwhyhowhowhow is any of this real???

[-] ameancow@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago

You're also made of 30-trillion little microscopic machines with vastly more complexity each than even the most fantastic clockwork we've ever devised, that are each working in harmony with each other, creating a vast machine that is continually breaking itself apart and rebuilding itself from parts of its environment as it moves through time and space.

And somehow you can breath either manually or automatically without breaking a stride.

[-] jivandabeast@lemmy.browntown.dev 7 points 1 month ago

So what you're saying is, we're all just REALLY good factorio runs

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[-] Thorry@feddit.org 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Fun fact, we do not just orbit the galaxy in a circle, we also have a motion perpendicular to that circle. We oscillate up and down through the plane of the Milky Way. The Milky Way is super thin, like super ultra thin. If the Milky Way were a pancake, it would only be the thickness of a sheet of paper, a sad pancake indeed. However in terms of human scales it is still huge, so we have a large way to travel. Our galactic orbit is tilted as compared to the galactic plane, so throughout the cosmic year we move up and down as compared to the center. A motion of 100-200 light year, so pretty big. That orbit also has procession, so we move through different parts.

The galaxy itself is also moving, although at that scale it's easier to think of the galaxy to be stationary and other galaxies moving towards or away from us. In general we are all moving towards a galaxy cluster known as "The Great Attractor" as it is the most massive (except for your mom).

It's also often forgotten that our sun isn't the only star moving in the galaxy. All of the stars orbit the galaxy in a lot of different orbits. And some don't orbit at all, instead moving with escape velocity (or faster) to get flung outside of our galaxy. Some have their own orbit in companion dwarf galaxies that in turn orbit our own galaxy. It's easy to think of a galaxy as a fixed thing, with all the stars in the same place moving together like on a disk. But this isn't the case at all, stars aren't bound together and can follow their own path. Over time their relative positions change and the constellations we know won't exist anymore.

The structures we see in galaxies like spiral arms for example are only structures in the same way a wave in the ocean is a structure. It is clearly a thing that exists, with properties we can at least somewhat constrain (like size for example). But the water inside that wave is just water like everywhere else. At one point it's part of the wave and then at some point it no longer is. It's the same for stars, sometimes part of a structure, other times not (although it gets complicated quickly if you dig into the details)

[-] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

That's called a crepe and they are DELICIOUS.

[-] Wav_function@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Praise skycrepe

[-] RedSnt@feddit.dk 6 points 1 month ago

As far as I know we're headed toward another galaxy. Luckily we'll all by long gone by the time that collision happens.

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[-] scala@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
[-] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 month ago

There's also no reason to believe that expansion isn't happening in a spheroid pattern. The big bang wouldn't have been like a blunderbuss, more like a naval mine suspended in the abyss, exploding in all directions.

For that matter, did the big bang ever cease, or has it continued to spew out new energy, and we're just so inconceivably far out that our entire observable universe is just one small section of a relatively narrow range of distance from the center?

Lastly, if the big bang is like a faucet, what if black holes are like drains in a tub, or in other words wormholes leading back to whatever realm everything came from before being spewed out by the big bang?

Everything in the universe is cyclical; there's no way something doesn't complete the circuit, even if it's just a big crunch.

[-] Donkter@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

This model does assume the big bang happened in a spheroid pattern. It's just flattened to add time as an axis from left to right cause you couldn't represent time otherwise.

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[-] Zink@programming.dev 16 points 1 month ago

Fun, fun, we skip along together!

Swirling towards the center...

Where there is no pain and we are truly together, forever.

...

Eat at Arby's

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[-] Liz@midwest.social 12 points 1 month ago

It's my understanding that the specific direction on this relative motion graphic is just made-up, but it does do a good job of reminding people that we're orbiting the galactic center.

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[-] Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 month ago

That's not Mama, that's our son!

[-] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 month ago

The sun is not a sweet mother, he is armed with the great serpent Xiuhcoatl and demands the hearts of our enemies.

[-] ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

The fun stops when you find out about Sagittarius A.

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[-] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 month ago

I mean its kinda terrifying when you think about it from the perspective of someone who grew up in an abusive household

"You will never leave my control"

Either you get tossed to the curb by mom and you are cold and alone after being so used to the warmth and the plant is dead (flung out of orbit), or get murdered by her (red giant... engulf the system)

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[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 month ago

Does the sun actually travel in a straight line, or do the orbits of the planets wobble it, and to what extent?

[-] rImITywR@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

Everything in the solar system (even the Son) orbit around the center of mass of everything in the solar system. This epicenter is just outside of the Son, on the side that Jupiter is. So the Son wobbles by a little bit more than 1 of its radii.

[-] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 month ago

Sun, I am disappoint.

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[-] tomiant@piefed.social 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I am under the impression that straight lines don't really exist in the Universe.

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[-] zen@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 month ago

What if Sol is not our Mama, but our Pied Piper? 🎺

[-] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 7 points 1 month ago

Probably true for Pluto.

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[-] stiffyGlitch@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

ok! time for all those years of science to finally pay off:

Would you still love "her" if you knew that, every single second, thousands of waves of extreme radiation from the Sun, traveling at a million light-years per millisecond, hits our planet's atmosphere? These waves slowly erode one of the only protections that we have against the Sun. But don't worry, this planet has several more tricks up -- and under -- the crust of the Earth. The iron core of the earth emits a geomagnetic field that extends into space, creating a region called the magnetosphere. This magnetosphere blocks most of the Sun's deadly rays, deflecting them back into space.

(also I didn't get this off of Google. I just have a really good memory. also I added the bolded words)

[-] xthexder@l.sw0.com 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

traveling at a million light-years per millisecond

You're only off by a factor of about 30 quadrillion.

Light (famously a type of radiation), takes 1 year to travel a light-year, hence the name.

If you want to make it sound impressive, then astronomical units aren't the right choice. The sun is only 1 AU away from us after all.

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[-] massacre@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

million light-years per millisecond

Gonna need a citation on that one! ;)

kidding aside, Mars is a great example of what will happen to Earth should our core stop generating our magnetic field. Also... Auroras!

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[-] hesh@quokk.au 6 points 1 month ago

Just a loop around Sag A*

[-] Gladaed@feddit.org 6 points 1 month ago

The sun is literally having zero part in this. We would still circle around the galaxy in the same way without her. Only orbits would change a bit.

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[-] expatriado@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

i see, that's why the ecliptic and the milky way don't align on the sky

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this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
920 points (100.0% liked)

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