How fast we move through the Universe

You are sitting, standing or lying down, reading this article, and do not feel that the Earth rotates on its axis at a breakneck pace - about 1 700 km / h at the equator. However, the rotational speed does not seem so fast, if you translate it into km / s. Yielding 0.5 km / s - a faint blip on the radar compared to other surrounding us speed.

Just like the other planets of the solar system, the earth revolves around the sun. And to be held in its orbit, it moves at a speed of 30 km / s. Venus and Mercury, which are closer to the Sun move faster Mars, whose orbit passes over the Earth's orbit, moving much slower than it.

But even the sun does not stand still. Our Milky Way galaxy - a huge, massive, and also mobile! All the stars, planets, gas clouds, dust particles, black holes, dark matter - all that moves with respect to common center of mass.

According to the assumptions of scientists, the Sun is at a distance of 25,000 light years from the center of our galaxy, and moves in an elliptical orbit, making a complete revolution every 220-250 million years. It turns out that the speed of the Sun - about 200-220 km / s, which is hundreds of times higher than the speed of movement of the Earth around its axis and is ten times higher than the speed of its movement around the sun. Here is the movement of our solar system.

Whether stationary galaxy? Again, no. Giant space objects have a large mass, and hence create strong gravitational field. Give the universe a little time (and it we had - about 13.8 billion years), and things will begin to move in the direction of the greatest attraction. That is why the universe is not homogeneous, but is a group of galaxies and galaxies.

What does this mean for us?

This means that the Milky Way is pulled to his other galaxies and groups of galaxies nearby. This means that dominate the process of massive objects. And this means that not only our galaxy, but all around are influenced by these "trucks". We are ever closer to understanding what is happening to us in space, but we still do not have enough facts, for example:

• What were the initial conditions under which the universe was born;
• how different masses in the galaxy move and change over time;
• how the Milky Way formed and the surrounding galaxies and clusters;
• and as it is now.

However, there is a trick that will help us to understand.

Fills the universe CMB temperature 2,725 K, which has survived since the time of the Big Bang. In some places there are tiny deviations - about 100 mK, but the general background temperature is constant.

This is because the universe was formed as a result of the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, and still expands and cools.

After 380 000 years after the Big Bang the Universe had cooled to such a temperature that made possible the formation of hydrogen atoms. Prior to this, the photons interact constantly with other plasma particles: faced with them and exchanging energy. As the cooling of the charged particles of the universe was smaller and the space between them - more. The photons were able to move freely in space. Cosmic microwave background radiation - is the photons that have been rejected by the plasma in the direction of Earth's future location, but avoid scattering as recombination has already begun. They reach the Earth through the space of the universe, which continues to expand.

You are free to "see" this radiation. Interference that occur on the empty channel of the TV if you are using a single antenna, similar to rabbit ears, 1% caused by the CMB.

Still, the temperature of the microwave background is not the same in all directions. According to the results of the Planck mission of research, the temperature varies slightly in opposite hemispheres heavenly sphere: it is slightly higher in areas of the sky to the south of the ecliptic - about 2,728 K, and lower in the other half - about 2,722 K.

This difference is almost 100 times more than the rest of the observed temperature fluctuations of the microwave background, and it is misleading. Why it happens? The answer is obvious - the difference is not due to fluctuations in the CMB, it appears, because there is movement!

When you get closer to the light source, or it is close to you, the spectral lines in the spectrum of the source shift toward shorter wavelengths (blue shift) when moving away from him, or he to you - the spectral lines are shifted to longer wavelengths (red bias).

Cosmic microwave background radiation can be more or less energetic, then we move through space. Doppler effect helps to determine that our solar system is moving relative to the CMB with a speed 368 ± 2 km / s, and a local group galaxies, including the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxy Triangle, moves with a velocity 627 ± 22 km / s relative to the relict radiation. This so-called peculiar velocities of galaxies that make up the several hundred km / s. Besides them there are cosmological speed due to the expansion of the universe, and calculated the Hubble law.

Due to the residual radiation from the Big Bang, we can observe that the universe is constantly moving and changing all. And our galaxy - only a part of the process.

(via)