Scale of cosmos gives astronomer perspective
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, released April 3, 2007, shows a view of the nearby barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672. More information here. (NASA)
Here’s one astronomer’s perspective on the vast scale of the cosmos versus the ordinary scale of everyday living.
Maura McLaughlin: Most of the time I’m just sitting here in my office with my computer, writing computer programs to do this or that … Sometimes, I forget about how amazing it is that we are actually looking at things that are thousands of light–years away.
That’s Maura McLaughlin at West Virginia University. She helped discover a pair of pulsars in orbit around each other.
Pulsars are collapsed stars. If our sun became one, it’d be only as wide as an earthly city, instead of 100 times Earth’s diameter.
The double pulsar system discovered by McLaughlin’s team is thought to be 2,000 light years away. Yet, the team learned that these pulsars are spiraling into each other at a rate of 7 millimeters each day – or about the width of a pencil.
Maura McLaughlin: You have a really good day at work, and you find something really big like this, and it does put things in perspective. And when you’re worrying about trying to get the garbage out on time, and you think, “Wow, I’ve just been looking at things that are thousands of light–years away. How important, really, is it, that I’m holding on to my recycling for one more week because I forgot it.” Little problems on Earth do seem more insignificant when you try to put them in perspective.
Tell us your perspective below, in the comments. Thanks today to Research Corporation, a foundation for the advancement of science.
Our thanks to:
Maura McLaughlin
Department of Physics
University of West Virginia
Morgantown, West Virginia
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i read a recent story in sky and telescope,or it may have been discover magazine, on binary stars having possible earthlike planets that left me wanting to read more. thanks
Scale is something I really try to emphasize in my classes, and in fact it is a major component of an NSF-funded study I am participating in relating to student perspectives. One of the best ways of imparting a sense of scale is through the use of analogies. One I like uses a BB. It’s rough but gets the idea across. Basically, imagine that the Universe is shrunk down to the point that our Sun is the size of a BB (actually, I’m using 1/8th of an inch). Then on that scale, the nearest other star would be another BB about 57 miles away. So just imagine two BBs separated by 57 miles and you get the rough scale of the sizes and distances between stars in our neck of the Milky Way.
LS
another great example is in the book “red giants and white dwarfs” where the sun is an orange the earth is a grain of sand at 10 feet, jupiter is a cherry pit 1 bl0ck away, saturn another cherry pit 2 blocks away, pluto another grain of sand 10 blocks away, and the next closest star a little over 4 light years would be measured by placing your orange in downtown new york and the other orange in downtown sydney australia. it really makes you think about space and time and shows that if your mad at your work or cut off in traffic your problem is really nothing.‘perspective is the little universe in our heads.