The Milky Way: Our Home Galaxy in the Cosmos
1,397,865
Published 2021-08-23
0:00:00 - Our Cosmic Address
0:14:51 - The Great Cosmic Distance Debate
1:06:29 - The Milky Way's Many Faces
1:35:14 - Stellar Neighborhoods: the Population I and II Stars
1:53:35 - The Galaxy's Formation, Evolution and Fate
2:13:31 - The Milky Way's Spiral Arms
2:39:57 - Dark Matter in the Milky Way and Beyond
3:24:06 - The Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way
(Correction: William Parsons, The Third Earl of Rosse, was Irish, not British. Apologies to the Irish viewers out there!)
Now we start the process of learning our place in space, by learning about our Cosmic Address. Where is our place in the universe? What is the scale of the Cosmic Map? After that, we learn the history of the Great Cosmic Distance Debate. The development of our understanding of our place that was just described is one of the great stories of modern science. The people of the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th were just learning about what was out there. Their fierce debates and competitive drives were spurred on by their insatiable curiosity. We learn of great women pioneers in science, and we learn that the painstaking measurements of the distances to the nearest galaxies led to one of the most surprising findings of all time: the expansion of the universe. We then take a step back and look more closely at our home Galaxy, looking at full-sky images in many wavelengths that detail exactly what makes up our home. Next, these simple observations, combined with spectroscopic analysis gave rise to the discovery of two broad types of stars in the Milky Way, the practically-named Population I and II Stars. This gives us the basis for understanding that all stars and therefore our galaxy, changes with time. Armed with this understanding, we reach into the deep past and the deep future, as we explore the formation, evolution and fate of the Milky Way. We jump around in our discussion to the factories of star formation, the spiral arms. We show the evidence for them in our Galaxy, and we see our Galaxy as one among many. Following that, we see great anomalies in the way our Galaxy rotates, and how the spiral arm structure evolves. By studying this motion, astronomers discovered that there was something missing. A lot of stuff was missing. The Galaxy is rotating faster than it should when we take into account all the matter that emits light. We learned that most of the matter in the cosmos doesn’t interact with light at all, and was named Dark Matter. Last, we learn about the behemoth black hole residing in the core of the Milky Way. A central place of exceeding violence that’s safely placed many tens of thousands of lightyears away. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, SGR A*, belies its presence through its influence on stars and gas clouds in its local environment. It's the nearest such black hole, and there is ample reason for us thinking it actually is such an object.
All Comments (21)
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Wow! This is the first video of mine to break 1 million views! That's amazing! Thanks for the support! You can watch the entire series of videos here: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyu4Fovbph6fl0UGSo3aLqH…
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This is wonderful to watch...feels like I'm in school at my favorite class with my best teacher! I recall the 8 year old me being asked what I wanted to be when i grew up ,by my grade 3 teacher "A scientist"...was my reply without hesitation. That never happened, but here I am ,62 years later, just as in awe now as i was then. Thank you so much for giving this old man such an enjoyable viewing experience!
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I fell asleep playing a 10 hour sleeping video where you fly through a galaxy and it’s supposed to help you sleep. I woke up to this video playing and since then have been engulfed in your videos! It’s all just so Interesting and even though most of the info goes over my head I can’t stop watching!
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Fell asleep watching totally something else, but only happy to wake up on this, and continued sleeping bit more.
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First time hearing your channel I'm obsessed with face and sciences I must say that this is on or above quality of well-known YouTubers as Frasier or Anton thank you earned my sub ty again
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I cannot begin to tell you how much I enjoy these long-form uploads. Seriously.....so good.
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This is a godlike series of lectures, thank you Jason!
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I asked for playlist and I got all these! You is a bloody LEGEND, mate. Keep it up and G’day from Australia
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I passed out watching smartereveryday and woke up to this, I ain't mad just glad I didn't end up on one of those documentary livestream channels
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Hey jason, I doubt you will even get to read this because I imagine you are extremely busy but, I've been watching all of your videos over the past few months and I felt compelled to leave ya a comment. Your videos are so I'm depth and I just love gaining all of this knowledge from your videos. My daughter has now begun to watch them she is 12 and she sticks to the iPad like glue watching your vids!! Woo keep it up man your amazing, and thanks again from the Taylor family!!!
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Your content never fails to amaze me and ignite my hunger for knowledge about the universe. Thank you for sparking my curiosity.
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Excelent, thank you for the upload sir.
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I love your sense of humour and the way you explain the equations makes what initially looks like a bunch of letters and numbers around an equals sign very understandable - cheers for the upload and will be working my way through all your long videos at bedtime :)
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I love this video! Thanks Jason!
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Thank you for including Pluto as a planet! I too believe that the New Horizons project and images sent back of our beloved 9th planet are the most incredible discoveries of our lifetime!
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I love the idea of naming the combination of the two galaxies that we won't be around to see Milkcomida. That's thinking ahead!
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So very well explained even the physics
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Amazing video thanks 👍
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Our brains are finite, incomplete, and therefore imperfect. So, I always have much more to learn. This is definitely a great video.
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this is an excellent lecture. I would consider myself fortunate to be in your class
