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Showing posts with the label Milky Way

Our Place In The Universe

We live on one simple planet, Earth.  That planet is about 12,712 kilometers in diameter from pole to pole.  The entire human species is just a speck on the face of this planet.  That planet is part of a solar system made up of 8 other planets which revolve around an average star that we call the sun.  Our solar system is approximately 287.46 billion kilometers in diameter.  Just to give you some perspective on our small little tucked away corner of the universe, the Voyager 1 probe was launched from earth on September 5, 1977 and has been traveling ever since.  The total mission duration is about 36 and a half years.  During this time, the probe has traveled at a velocity of 17 kilometers every second (that's 11 miles every second).  As of August 25, 2012, the voyager finally left our solar system and ventured into interstellar space.  That is the scope of our solar system.  Let's move out a little more and see how small this massive so...