• Question: How fun is it to look at the galaxy?

    Asked by anon-223190 to Sam on 14 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Sam Lawrence

      Sam Lawrence answered on 14 Nov 2019:


      It’s great fun to look at the galaxy. It is both beautiful to look at but also mind blowing to think about. Although they are silent to us, if you were standing within the gas of a star within the galaxy (so sound can travel) the noise would be deafening! Every second inside of the star’s cores, smaller atoms are being crushed via nuclear fusion to make larger atoms releasing huge amounts of explosive energy which are then carried by light rays to our eyes. Don’t forget that any image of a star or galaxy in space is a snapshot of what it looked like in the past (since its light takes time to reach us)!

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