Distances in Space

Have you ever wondered how many different measurements are in space?  Well scientists could use measurements such as kilometers but distances are much too big for that therefore causing extremely large numbers which are hard to grasp.  So they made measurements such as AU’s and light years.  One AU is 149 597 870 kilometers, that is the distance from the Earth all the way to the Sun.  There are also light years.  A light year is the distance light can travel in one year.  Now this is where it starts to get complicated.  So light moves at a speed of 300 000 kilometers per second, therefore it can travel 9.5 trillion kilometers is one year.  So some wonder why it is necessary to use such a big measurement.  This is why.  It is a few hundred kilometers from New York City to Washington, DC; it is a few thousand kilometers from California to Maine. In the Universe, the kilometer is just too small to be useful. For example, the distance to the next nearest big galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is 21 quintillion km. That's 21,000,000,000,000,000,000 km.  So when you use km in space the number get so big that it gets very hard to understand and takes a long time to write out.    There is also the parsec, the parsec is 3.26 light years.  That is a lot about light in space but what does it have to do with black holes?  Well for one the closest black holes that scientists know of right now is only 1600 light years away.  That is only in theory though.  So 1600 light years is how many kilometers?  It would be 15,126,807,928,780,800 kilometers.  That is perfect example of why we have measurements such as light years and astronomical Units.  So if you have ever wondered what the measurements in space are and how they are related to black holes you now know.

Could there be any black holes in our galaxy?

In 1972, an X-ray telescope aboard the satellite Uhuru detected what may be a black hole in our galaxy. A star called Cygnus X-1, emitting intense amounts of X-rays, is believed to be a binary star whose companion is a black hole. The unseen companion, which may have ten times the mass of the sun, seems to be pulling in stellar material from Cygnus. A second black hole candidate in our galaxy was discovered in 1957. This star in the constellation Monoceros came to the attention of astronomers because of the enormous amount of X-rays it produces. A third star, in the constellation Aquila the Eagle, may also be a black hole. The star appears to be a binary system containing one big star and a dense invisible unknown object. As the two objects orbit around each other, the possible black hole sucks in matter from its companion and spews out radiation.

By Mack Docksteader

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