Download Scale and Structure of the Universe

Describe the overall scale and
structure of the universe.
8th grade Science
Do you know the answers to these questions?
•What are the main structures of the universe?
•How big are they compared to each other?
•What is a galaxy?
•Which one contains our solar system?
•How big is our galaxy?
•What is a supercluster?
•Which one contains our galaxy?
•How big is our supercluster?
•What is a filament structure?
•How big is the known universe?
Most of the Universe is made up of Dark Matter and
Dark Energy. That is the all that black stuff out there
in space. We are not sure what it is. It is not like
matter on Earth. It is not a liquid, solid or gas. The
only way we know it is there is because it seems to
create gravitational pull on other structures out in
space.
The planet Earth is just one structure in the solar
system. The diameter of the Earth is 12,700 miles
across. How much bigger is the solar system?
A solar system is a collection of planets,
asteroids and dust orbiting around a star.
The diameter of the solar system is 7 billion miles.
Light can travel 186,000 miles a
second! That is about 6 trillion
miles in a year!
Galaxies are too big to measure in miles.
Instead we use light years. A light year is
the distance light can travel in 1 year.
A galaxy is made of planets, stars,
gases and dust held together by gravity.
YOU is
LIVE
HERE! the Milky Way. It is a
Our galaxy
called
spiral galaxy. This means that the outside
arms spin around the center. The center of
the galaxy is theorized to be a black hole.
Don’t worry, our solar system is 30,000
light years away from the that black hole!
Our galaxy measures approximately
100,000 light years in diameter. It takes
225 million years for our solar system to
make one trip around the Milky Way!
A super cluster is a lot of galaxies that
are relatively close together. The name of
the super cluster that holds our galaxy is
called the Virgo super cluster. The
diameter of our super cluster is
approximately 100 million light years. That
means it would take a beam of light 100
million years to get from one side to
another.
Milky way galaxy
Have you ever wondered what a picture of the
universe might look like?
All the super clusters connected together make
up the filament structure/universe. This is the
More?
largest structure in the universe.
The diameter of the universe is estimated to be 100
billion light years from one side to the other.
Can you find where Earth is?
How do we measure the scale of Scale of the Space?
Earth
Solar System
Milky Way Galaxy
12,700 miles
(diameter)
7 billion miles
(diameter)
100,000 light years
(diameter)
Virgo super cluster
100 million light years
(diameter)
Universe/Filaments
100 billion light years
(diameter)
Light Year: the distance light can travel in one year.