What is the Milky Way?

[Music Playing] Veronica: Caught in mysterious dark matter concealing a super mass of black hole and feeding on its smaller neighbors. The Milky Way it truly a heavy weight in our part of the universe. Hi! I am Veronica, thewatchmojo.com. Today we are at the planetarium with Louie Bernstein to find out more about the Milky Way. So can you tell us about the Milky Way? Louie Bernstein: Sure, Milky Way is our galaxy and it is an island of stars like all galaxies, it contains the necessary ingredients for star formation and the formation of planets and life. It has all of those heavy elements. Starts are born and they live it through lines in galaxies, and as that process happens, stars also develop planets and orbit around them. In galaxies, you find other heavy elements that make up life with Carbon, Calcium, and Iron, and Oxygen and so on and so forth. Outside of galaxy is what you find mostly is only Hydrogen and Helium. This is really not enough raw material out there on which the base life, so really our Milky Way is an oasis in space where life evolved. Veronica: how can we find the Milky Way in the sky? Louie Bernstein well, summer is a great time for seeing the Milky Way because it really rises in the south, and there is overhead practically, and then disappears down below the northern horizon. So, it really looks like a band of light, a glowing band of light that stretches across the sky. Veronica: what are some popular myths that have developed? Louie Bernstein Well, you can imagine long ago people did not have a clue what the Milky Way was. They did not know what the stars. They thought that it had a lot to do with spirits and with gods and departed souls. It was where people went when they die and for example the Egyptians believed the Milky Way was the road of souls. Some cultures stuff that it was the back bone of the night, and it is supported with night sky. The Greeks actually gave us the name for the Milky Way and they believe that it was the milk of the goddess Hera sprayed acrossed the sky. Veronica: How science helped us better understand the Milky Way? Louie Bernstein Modern technology allows us to really go deeply into the structure and evolutions of galaxies by looking at distant galaxies, we can see how they evolved, how they interact and the farther way you look, the farther back in time you can see. We can see galaxies in various stages of their evolution. We can apply all that to our galaxy and we know that it evolved shortly after the big bang that our galaxy is about 13 billion years old, that it probably under went a merger with another galaxy about 12 billion years ago. There was a super massive black hole that weighs the equivalent of 4 million suns at the heart of our galaxy. And, we also recently learned that 80% of our galaxy is made of a brand new kind of matter called dark matter that no one even knew that it existed a few decades ago. Veronica: what is the most interesting fact about the Milky Way? Louie Bernstein I think that life evolved in it, that it is really part of the universe. There is nothing special about the Milky Way. The ingredients we find in the Milky Way, on the processes that another grows are the same for all galaxies. Out of all of the natural resources of the ancient universe, life evolved. Up today, human consciousness allows us to look back and puncture our origins and also where we are going or destiny. So think that is probably the most amazing thing.