Galileo Galilei - How the Universe Works TV - Michio Kaku - Unfolding Universe TV - Cosmic Collisions TV - John Milton - The Universe TV - Michelle Thaller - Neil deGrasse Tyson TV - Dante Alighieri - Geoff Marcy TV - Cosmic Monsters TV - Brian Cox TV -
What was observed by us in the third place is the nature or matter of the Milky Way itself, which, with the aid of the spyglass, may be observed so well that all the disputes that for so many generations have vexed philosophers are destroyed by visible certainty, and we are liberated from wordy arguments. Galileo Galilei
Quasars blast away huge quantities of gas from the surrounding galaxy. The equivalent of ten Earths every minute. Black holes suck gas in; quasars blow it out. But eventually there’s no gas left to make stars. And the galaxy stops growing. With no gas left to feed on, the quasar jets shrink and die. What’s left is a supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy with a lot of infant stars. Just like our Milky Way when it was young. How the Universe Works s1e2: Black Holes, Discovery 2010
We live in a galaxy called the Milky Way. An empire with hundreds of billions of stars. There are two hundred billion galaxies in the known universe. Each one unique, enormous and dynamic. How the Universe Works s1e3: Galaxies
The stars in a galaxy are born in clouds of dust and gas called nebulas. ibid.
Our galaxy contains many billions of stars. And around many of them are systems of planets and moons. But for a long time we didn’t know much about galaxies. Just a century ago we thought the Milky Way was all there was. Scientists called it our island universe. For them no other galaxies existed. Then in 1924 astronomer Edwin Hubble changed that thinking. ibid.
Andromeda our nearest galactic neighbour is over two hundred thousand light years across. Twice the size of our galaxy. ibid.
They all seem to orbit something at their centre ... A black hole. And not just any sort of black hole: but a supermassive black hole. The meal is gas and stars. And it’s being consumed by the supermassive black hole. But sometimes black holes devour too quickly. And what they’re consuming is discharged back into space as beams of pure energy. It’s called a Quasar. ibid.
The black hole at the centre of the Milky Way is gigantic. Twenty-four million kilometres across. ibid.
The Milky Way: a galaxy of over 200 billion stars. But where did it all come from? So what was it? What sparked our galaxy into life? New research has suggested a source: is the great destroyer of the universe actually a creator? Did a black hole build our galaxy? How the Universe Works s3e7: Did a Black Hole Build the Milky Way?
Was a black hole our great creator? ibid.
A new theory called Direct Collapse emerged. ibid.
The fate of our galaxy hangs in the balance. The Milky Way is dying. And we don’t know why. The hunt is on to find the cause. It’s a cosmic Why investigation. And every possible reason is under suspicion and will be scrutinised. What is killing the Milky Way? How the Universe Works s6e6: Death of the Milky Way
Repeated dwarf-galaxy collisions could have radically altered the shape of the Milky Way itself … Are dwarf galaxies killing the Milky Way? ibid.
The Milky Way is eating itself to death. ibid.
If you want to see a black hole tonight, tonight just look in the direction of Sagittarius, the constellation. That’s the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and there’s a raging black hole at the very center of that constellation that holds the galaxy together. Michio Kaku
Astronomers had an existential shock! In one year we went from the universe being the Milky Way galaxy to the universe of billions of galaxies. Professor Michio Kaku
The new hybrid galaxy, half Andromeda, half Milky Way, will be more of a ball than a disc. In its core two supermassive black holes will orbit each other in a tightening spiral until they finally merge. As our new galaxy falls towards the Virgo super-cluster more titanic collisions are in store. Unfolding Universe
Throughout the universe galaxies crash into each other at phenomenal speed. This may be the fate of the Milky Way. The most violent impacts in the universe occur when galaxies collide ... Our own galaxy is at risk of crashing with its closest neighbour Andromeda. Cosmic Collisions: Galaxies, Discovery 2009
It’s a collection of gas, dust, planets and millions and millions of stars. ibid.
A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,
And pavement stars – as starts to thee appear
Soon in the galaxy, that milky way
Which mightly as a circling zone thou seest
Powder’d with stars. John Milton, Paradise Lost
There is a region at the core of our galaxy the Milky Way where nothing escapes … a supermassive black hole. The Universe s1e9: Alien Galaxies, History 2007
It’s a crucible of creation. And destruction ... Now astronomers have pierced the galaxy’s heart of darkness to find out a way through the Milky Way. The Universe s2e4: The Milky Way
It’s one hundred thousand light years in diameter. Has a trillion times more mass than our sun. It began about thirteen billion years ago. And is still under construction. This is our galaxy: the Milky Way. ibid.
This is where we live. Our solar system is among the Milky Way’s spiral arms, twenty-six thousand light years from the bustling centre. The galaxy is so large that it takes the Earth two hundred million years to complete one lap. ibid.
A community of two to four hundred billion. ibid.
Our solar system had made a complete circuit only fourteen times since it formed. ibid.
How much do we really know about our corner of the Milky Way? The Universe s7e3: Our Place in the Milky Way
In 2011 one of Nasa’s space telescopes, the Wide-Field Infra-Red Survey Explorer [WISE] ... found a series of Brown Dwarfs right in our neighbourhood. ibid.
The Milky Way sounds like something kind of comforting. Sweet. But the Milky Way is a monster. Michelle Thaller, NASA & Caltech
Just recently we’ve discovered that there are two small galaxies colliding with the Milky Way right now. And the only reason we didn’t know they were there is because there is so much dust at the disk of our galaxy ... With infra-red you can cut through that dust ... So we saw these little galaxies up there coming right at us. Michelle Thaller
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is one of 50 or 100 billion other galaxies in the universe. And with every step, every window that modern astrophysics has opened to our mind, the person who wants to feel like they’re the centre of everything ends up shrinking. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Beyond the outermost planet there’s a swarm of tens of thousands of frozen worlds. And Pluto is one of them. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey I: Standing Up in the Milky Way, Fox 2014
As, pricked out with less and greater lights, between the poles of the universe, the Milky Way so gleameth white as to set very sages questioning. Dante Alighieri, The Paradiso of Dante Alighieri
We would estimate there are fifty billion maybe, sixty billion Earth-like planets within just our Milky Way galaxy alone. Geoff Marcy, University of California Berkeley
Eric Becklin has discovered the very heart of the Milky Way. The exact location of the mysterious energy source. But its staggering power meant that this was no ordinary star. Scientists believe the only one thing that could explain the mystery was the very idea that Einstein had rejected. Cosmic Monsters
The object [at the centre of our galaxy] weighed in at a staggering three million times that of our sun. ibid.
It takes two hundred and fifty million years to make just one circuit of the Milky Way. In the entire history of the human race we’ve travelled less than a tenth of one percent of that orbit. Brian Cox, Wonders of the Universe 1/4: Destiny, BBC 2011
An outer spiral arm of our galaxy the Milk Way, our home island of four hundred billion stars. The Milky Way takes its name from the dense band of stars that sweeps across the sky on the clearest of nights. Brian Cox, Universe III, BBC 2011