We know that the Sun is not in a fixed place in the galaxy, but rather revolves around a point at its center, a journey that takes about 250 million years to complete. And it is precisely – in part – thanks to the path of the galactic orbit of our star that the Earth supports complex life, since it moves away from the inhospitable center of the galaxy, where life probably could not survive.
Now, NASA astrophysicist Jessie Christiansen has revealed the time scale of the dinosaurs, tracing their evolution and disappearance and creating a striking animation showing Earth on the opposite side of the Milky Way during this time of the Mesozoic Era in the one that dinosaurs walked the Earth.
The sense of time
The giant beasts roamed the Earth for roughly 177 million years before an asteroid led to their eventual extinction. Tracking the movement of our solar system through the Milky Way, Christiansen has exposed that human beings have been present on Earth for only five million years, less than 9% of the time that dinosaurs.
So just as the Earth revolves around the Sun, the Sun (with all the planets in tow) also revolves around the center of the galaxy. We are moving at about 828,000 kilometers per hour, at a distance of approximately 28,000 light years from the galactic center. You don’t have to do the math, roughly estimates place between 225 and 250 million Earth years) the time it takes to complete one orbit around the Milky Way’s galactic center.
This enormous amount of time reveals that, in addition, from the time of the plesiosaurs (large swimming reptiles) to the extinction event that wiped out the last dinosaurs approximately 65 million years ago, the solar system has moved three-quarters of the galactic center .
In the video created by Christiansen, we see many scientific curiosities, such as, for example, that there is a larger time gap between the stegosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus rex than between T. rex and us, Humanity.
The NASA expert claims that she created the animation simply for fun during her free hours, nothing official, so it is not a NASA project related to dinosaurs and space-time. Pure entertainment.
However, the galactic movement is more complicated than the video of the researcher shows. Not only are these objects moving, but the other stars and planetary systems in the galaxy are moving as well, at different speeds and in different orbits (inner regions spin faster than outer ones, for example). Everything is much more complex. And furthermore, we cannot forget that the galaxy itself is moving through space, slowly but inexorably approaching our neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy.
A spiral through space
The expert comments that our journey is similar to as if we were spiraling through space, so our neighborhood is different from the last time we were here.
Earth, however, is not very different: it remains compatible with complex life, partly thanks to the path of the galactic orbit of our sun. When our solar system travels through the Milky Way it does not approach the inhospitable center. It is a powerful reason why dinosaurs, mammals, or any other form of life, are capable of existing on our planet.
