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by s1artibartfast
2245 days ago
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When making this comparison, I think it is interesting to note that both the distances between Earth to Alpha Centauri and the Milky Way to Andromeda aren't "typcial". To quote Douglas Adams, Earth is "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy". Intersteller distances are much smaller in galactic cores. For example, at the center of Andromeda, the average intersteller distance is 860 AU (compared to 266,900 for Earth-Centauri)[1]. Alternatively, Andomeda huge and on a colision course with the milky way, but not our closest neighbor. Both the Milky Way and Andromoeda have many smaller and closer neighbors, Some of which are of appreciable size. For example, the Large Magellanic Cloud is a "smaler" galaxy with about 30 billion stars and is 170kly or about one milky way diameter away from us.[2] https://astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2006/01/how-close-c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Magellanic_Cloud |
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