Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The theory of galactocentrism was an important step in the development of cosmological models as speculation on the existence of other galaxies, comparable in size and structure to the Milky Way, placed the Earth in its proper perspective with respect to the rest of the universe. Shifts from heliocentrism to galactocentrism and later acentrism ...
The Milky Way [c] is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
The Solar System's location in the Milky Way is a factor in the evolutionary history of life on Earth. Spiral arms are home to a far larger concentration of supernovae , gravitational instabilities, and radiation that could disrupt the Solar System, but since Earth stays in the Local Spur and therefore does not pass frequently through spiral ...
1995 — First detection of small-scale structure in the cosmic microwave background. 1995 — Hubble Deep Field survey of galaxies in field 144 arc seconds across. 1998 — The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey maps the large-scale structure in a section of the Universe close to the Milky Way. 1998 — The Hubble Deep Field South is compiled.
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) The Fermi paradox is a conflict between the argument that scale and probability seem to favor intelligent life being common in the universe, and the total lack of evidence of intelligent life having ever arisen anywhere other than on Earth. The first aspect of the Fermi paradox is a function of the scale or the large ...
The Rare Earth hypothesis argues that planets with complex life, like Earth, are exceptionally rare.. In planetary astronomy and astrobiology, the Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the origin of life and the evolution of biological complexity, such as sexually reproducing, multicellular organisms on Earth, and subsequently human intelligence, required an improbable combination of astrophysical ...
Thomas Wright (astronomer) Thomas Wright (22 September 1711 – 25 February 1786) was an English astronomer, mathematician, instrument maker, architect and garden designer. He was the first to describe the shape of the Milky Way and to speculate that faint nebulæ were distant galaxies .
Formation and evolution of the Solar System. Artist's conception of a protoplanetary disk. There is evidence that the formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. [1] Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest ...