Description
Our Galaxy, or, in other words, the Milky Way, is a huge cosmic city in which we live. The cities on Earth that we are accustomed to cannot compare with this cosmic giant in either size or population. After all, in order to reach the opposite outskirts of the star city, a ray of light will need more than 300 thousand years, and this cosmopolis is inhabited by hundreds of billions of stars. Not so many people live in all the cities on Earth taken together, and not a single spaceship develops such speeds that would allow us to fly beyond the boundaries of our galaxy and look at it from the outside. But thought is faster than the flow of light, and we can make a mental journey to the farthest outskirts of our cosmic city. With our eyes closed, we will be transported to an uninhabited mountain plateau, where the crystal-clear air does not hide the radiance of the starry sky from us, and raising our eyes to the stars, we will begin our fantastic journey to where no one has been...
In a few moments, we have overcome the limits of Earth's gravity, left the Solar System. Soon, both the Sun and the stars closest to it are lost in the stellar labyrinths. Our path lies through the densely populated arms of our Galaxy, through dark and light gas nebulae, where stars are born, flying past star clusters and planetary nebulae at the speed of thought, we make a sharp turn, exit the plane of the Milky Way and, picking up flight speed, head for the pole of the Galaxy, from where it has the most stunning view. An unusual panorama surrounds us. There is only sky here, sky in all directions, but there are absolutely no stars on it. It is black as coal and only in the endless depths below us, slowly rotating, floats a huge star disk. It sparkles like the January snow sparkles on a clear day. These are the countless stars that not long ago decorated our sky, now merged into one incomprehensible shimmer. From such a great distance, the eye cannot see them separately. But the streets of this city are clearly visible. Flowing from the shining center, they strive to the outskirts, twisting into spirals. It is in the spiral arms of the Galaxy that the youngest population lives. That is why they have a bluish color.
From afar, the life of the star city seems quiet and measured, but in fact this is not so. The life of the Galaxy is simply overflowing with cataclysms. Here, stars are born and die, supernovas explode, scattering billions of tons of hot gas across space, black holes collapse, absorbing the surrounding matter into their bottomless depths. The speeds on the star highways of the Galaxy reach hundreds of kilometers per second and the entire space of our cosmopolis is permeated with all types of radiation that exist in the Universe.
Continuing our walk along the star avenues of the Milky Way, our gaze falls on increasingly remote areas of the galaxy. Here, the stars live more freely, the rhythms of their cosmic life are calmer. Somewhere in space there is an invisible border, beyond which intergalactic space begins. There are no stars or nebulae here. Look around — we are surrounded by emptiness. The black sky is everywhere and the only thing present here is a weak stream of light emanating from the star city we left behind. But emptiness is not nothing. It was from emptiness that our Universe was born 14 billion years ago.
Look closely — in this starless sky you can still find two or three stars. Where did they come from? These are fugitive stars. Possessing enormous speed, they managed to escape the gravitational field of the Milky Way and now their path is directed to other, similar to ours, star islands. But even with their speed — thousands of kilometers per second, they will need hundreds of millions of years to get to worlds unknown to us.
However, for stars this is not too long, because stars live billions of years. By human standards this is insanely long, but perhaps it was not for nothing that the ancients said — "... Stars are like people ..." — suggesting that the life of a star is a continuation of human life in another incarnation and, perhaps, this rapid intergalactic journey is still ahead of us.
But now, having admired the view of our Galaxy, it is high time to set off on the return journey. There is nothing easier for us — we just need to find a familiar light in the window in this city — the ghostly light of the distant Sun.
