Astronomy and the Universe
Translated by Google Translate
To understand the universe, astronomy studies everything that is beyond our atmosphere, studying the stars and the characteristics that occur in them.
Detailing the studies to which astronomy is dedicated, we can also say that it studies the different solar bodies and objects that make up the universe, with emphasis, for example, on stars, moons, star clusters, planets, meteorites, asteroids, galaxies and nebulae.
Astronomy, in another definition, investigates, for example, the structure of the universe and each celestial body that is part of it, their origins and development, the interaction between them and the phenomena they cause. In this way, astronomy depends on other disciplines to understand the cosmos, such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, meteorology and biology.
Astronomy, therefore, studies the origin of the universe, the emergence of planets, the calculation of astronomical distances, the age and chemical composition of celestial bodies, the solar system, the Milky Way, other galaxies and the phenomena associated with them, exoplanets and other bodies outside the solar system, the birth and death of stars, the interstellar medium, the origin and evolution of black holes.
Thus, astronomy today is divided into astrobiology, astrophysics, astrometry, astrochemistry, stellar astronomy, planetary astronomy, galactic astronomy and finally cosmology.
From these astronomical studies, we know that the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old.
This time is based on our time, where 1 year has 365 days and each day has 24 hours. A day is also the time it takes for the Earth to rotate around its axis, making one complete turn.
These 13.7 billion years represent the time that light has traveled since the “Big Bang” event to reach the present day on Earth. In absolute terms, we can say that light has had to spend all this time traveling through space to Earth since the initial explosion.
The Earth belongs to a group of planets, satellites and other celestial bodies that are under the gravitational influence of the Sun, thus forming the group called the solar system.
This solar system is located within a galaxy called the “Milky Way”. To better understand the size of this galaxy, let’s imagine that the Milky Way has more than 100 billion stars and that the solar system is seen as a small dot that goes practically unnoticed in the immense diffuse and whitish light of the galaxy.
In the vast expanse of the universe, the Milky Way has its closest neighbors, another 49 galaxies, each containing billions of stars. This group of 50 galaxies to which the Milky Way belongs is called the Local Cluster of galaxies in astronomy. In this group of 50 galaxies, the Milky Way is part of the two largest galaxies of this Local Cluster.
In the universe, we have countless Local Clusters and these, forming sets with other neighboring Local Clusters, constitute the Local Superclusters of Local Clusters.
In turn, continuing the star map, the universe is composed of countless Local Superclusters.
Can you understand the magnitude of what we are talking about? It is very large, immense, mysterious, and we lack words to describe it. If we could travel through space at the speed of light, for example, and without thinking about the time it takes to make this trip, we would need a spectacular navigation system for such an endeavor, because without such a system, we would get lost in the vastness of space and would not know how to return to our starting point.
Now that we know our universe, in a synthetic description of the arrangements of the galaxies, let us move on to the quantification of biblical times suggested in chapter 2.
VIAGEM PARA O CÉU por ANTONIO FERNANDES MAMEDE é licenciado sob
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