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The Milky Way

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Astronomical Object

The Resume

    Home galaxy for Earth and its Solar System
    Approximately 100,000 light years in diameter
    For comparison, if the Solar System out to the orbit of Pluto were the size of a US quarter, the Milky Way would be the size of the contintental United States west of the Mississippi
    Contains an estimated 100-400 billion stars
    At least 13 billion years old
    Most of it appears as a hazy white band in the night sky

Why The Milky Way might be annoying:

    Astronomers are pretty sure it is a spiral galaxy, but they are not sure how many arms the spiral has or if it is an ordinary spiral or a barred spiral.
    Most of its mass is believed to consist of 'dark matter' that cannot be observed directly.
    There is a massive black hole at its center.
    It was once thought to contain everything in the universe.
    Edwin Hubble proved that several 'nebulae' were actually galaxies located outside the Milky Way (1925).
    It turned out to be merely one of 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

Why The Milky Way might not be annoying:

    Hey, it's home.
    It contains at least one example of intelligent life.
    The Greek philosophers Anaxagoras and Democritus proposed that the Milky Way consisted of distant stars in the 5th century BC.
    Galileo proved it consisted of stars by direct observation with the recently invented telescope (1610).
    It is surrounded by an outer ring of stars and gas that it apparently tore off from the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. (It's better to live in the galaxy doing the mugging than the one being mugged.)
    It is the only galaxy with a decent candy bar named after it. (Have you tried Large Magellanic Cloud Crunch? That stuff is crap!)

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 6 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 17 Votes: 35.29% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 5 Votes: 40.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 16 Votes: 31.25% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 4 Votes: 25.00% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 5 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 5 Votes: 40.0% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 16 Votes: 43.75% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 16 Votes: 12.50% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 59 Votes: 32.20% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 126 Votes: 53.17% Annoying