How long would it take to go from one edge of the milky way to the other?

Answer 1

Not sure, but the sun is 27,000 light years from the centre of the galaxy and the galaxy itself is 100,000 light years in width. The solar system is a pin prick compared to these sizes. i.e. 1 light year is about 10 trillion kilometres...

Answer 2

The Milky Way Galaxy is about 100,000 Light Years across. Each light year is about 63,241 Astronomical Units. An Astronomical unit is the average distance between the Sun and the Earth, or about 93 million miles. Based on that math we form an equation. 100,000x63,241=6,324,100,000 Astronomical units Thats exactly 5.881413 × 1017 or 588,141,200,000,000,000 miles. Thats 588 quadrillion 141 trillion 200 billion miles across the milky way galaxy.

Answer 3

The closest "star in the Milky Way" to Earth is only 93 million miles away; that star is our own Sun. (Our solar system is part of the Milky Way Galaxy.) The next closest is Proxima Centauri, at 4.2 light years.

Answer 4

A while ago, scientists thought that solar systems might be rare, or that ours was somehow unique. Now we know better.

We still have no idea how many solar systems there are; we can't be confident even to within an order of magnitude how many stars there are in the Milky Way. But observations of just some nearby stars suggest that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of planets in systems that are "close", relatively speaking, and that solar systems themselves may be as common as dirt.

Answer 5

We have no good estimate of the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and every time somebody makes one, somebody else bumps it up. The problem is that the smaller red dwarf and brown dwarf stars are practically invisible, and yet probably make up the majority of all stars. We probably wouldn't be too far wrong to estimate that the Milky Way contains a trillion stars. It could be double that, or double THAT.

How many have planets? Again, we can't tell. Space probes like the Kepler telescope and giant observatories like the ones on Mauna Kea each use special techniques and instruments to detect stars, but the very design of the experiments limit how many - and what kind! - of planets they can detect. Given how many planets we have ALREADY detected, we have to guess that planets are as common as dirt. Is the distribution of planets in the galaxy sort of uniform, or is it more likely that planets might exist in the spiral arms, where we are, rather than near the core, where the supermassive black hole is? We can only guess.

One other thing; since the first person answered this question, the Kepler team has been as busy as beavers; there are over 1,300 known exo-planets. We know, in general, nothing whatsoever about them other than that they exist.

Answer 6

The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across, meaning that it would take that many years if you were traveling at the speed of light, which is impossible. The average rocket travels at 0.138888 kilometers per second, whereas the speed of light is 299,792.458 kilometers per second. The only way to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other in a human lifetime is through a wormhole, which is only theoretical.

Answer 7

Depends how you travel.

If you were a photon of light you could do it in 100,000 years.

If you were in a Ford Mustang travelling at 100 mph - there are galactic police after all - and having an infinite fuel tank, it would take you 1,140,795,530,000,000,000,000,000,000 years!!!!

Answer 8

Not possible, for more reasons than we have space to discuss.

First, you can't walk off the planet, much less walk out of the solar system. Second, even if you could fly into space in your space suit at walking speed, the Sun would die before you got to the next star.

Third, we don't have any idea of how big the universe is, but we're pretty sure that it's getting bigger and expanding at tens of thousands of miles per hour. So even if you could walk into space, the universe would be getting bigger far faster than you could walk.

Answer 9

There are satellite galaxies in our "immediate neighborhood", about as close to us as the size of our own galaxy, in the order of 100,000 light-years. The next spiral galaxy, M31, is at a distance of about 3 million light-years. The farthest observablegalaxies are over 40 billion light-years away.

Answer 10

"The galactic disc, which bulges outward at the galactic center, has a diameter of between 70,000 and 100,000 light-years. The distance from the Sun to the galactic center is now estimated at 26,000 ± 1400 light-years."

This means the sun is between (50,000 - (26,000 ± 1400)) 24,000 ±1400 light-years and (35,000 - (26,000 ± 1400)) 9,000 ±1400 light-years from the edge of the Milky Way, and very much inside the Milky Way.