Galactic Wonders of Galaxies

Richmond, TX

Our Solar system consists of eight planets and our sun, but what if we were to leave our Solar system for a little while and take an adventure to learn about some of the galactic wonders of galaxies? Let’s start with our own galaxy, The Milky Way.

First photo of a supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A.

As of May 13, 2022 astronomers caught the first photo of the supermassive black hole in the middle of our galaxy, the Milky Way. With a diameter of seventy-eight billion miles, and about twenty-one billion times the mass of our sun, black holes are vast and one of the most mysterious things in our galaxy. But what is even more mysterious? White holes. White holes are the exact opposite of black holes. Black holes will devour anything that comes near it, including light. However, white holes expel light and prohibits anything that tries to come in. There are many theories on White Holes, but there’s no confirmed theory on them yet, which makes it all more a Galactic Wonder.

Galaxy with no dark matter.

Ready for yet another galactic wonder? Dark matter. Eight billion years ago, two galaxies had one collision, creating two dwarf galaxies. These galaxies, however, are void of any dark matter. Before we can talk about that we need to understand what dark matter really is. Dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect or emit light, meaning that dark matter can change the path of light. Dark matter is detectable by its gravitational effect. Dark matter is said to form the foundation of all galaxies, so what happens when there isn’t any dark matter? Well, that’s the galactic wonder in all of this. Astrophysicists think that there must be some matter that we can’t detect or see because of the gravitational effect dark matter has on stars. Yet another galactic wonder.

There are so many unknowns in our universe and that is what makes space so much more intriguing. I’m looking forward to seeing what else lays in our galaxy, and uncovering more galactic wonders in our universe. With technology advancing every day, who knows what else they could discover?

Thank you for reading!!