We belong to a galaxy called the Milkyway, Have you ever thought about how it got created? Have you ever seen galaxies? Definitely we have. In those starry nights, all the twinkles in the sky are not stars you might have unknowingly witnessed galaxies as well. Galaxies can be observed through our naked eye on a clear night but it is deceived as a star by our eyes. Before that what is a galaxy? Let us take a look.
Galaxies are one of the biggest extra terrestrial objects humans are aware of. The word galaxy itself is coined from the idea of our own galaxy Milkyway. It is an incarnation of Greek word Gala which stands for Milk. The phenomenon of galaxy formation has started one million after the formation of the universe that is one million after the big bang. There are recent discoveries that may alter our understanding of the time period of big bang and the events after it.
There are multiple theories on the formation of galaxies, let us see what those are.
1) The Big Bang created lumps of matters. The scattered lumps slowly started joining together which ultimately resulted in the formation of galaxies.
2) After the Big Bang there were only atoms. These atoms joined together in a pattern to form molecules. This led to the creation of elements. The most prominent element available in the universe is hydrogen which constitutes about 75 % of the universe (Hydrogen the element with atomic value 1 the lightest one). Helium (the element with atomic number 2) is the second most abundant element and it constitutes 24 percent of the universe. These clouds of gases start to attract each other and start swirling into orbits. This ultimately results in consolidation into heavy objects. That is, the collapse of the cloud of gases under its gravitational force paved the way to the birth of galaxies.
Based on the current and available telescopic capabilities we are under the impression that there are around 100 billion galaxies out there. But with the advancement in science and enhanced observation capabilities the count can even double or triple. Who knows? As per current knowledge it all started with big bang, that is before big bang the state was homogeneous in nature and the big bang resulted in a heterogeneous world. Amazing and poetic. Will soon be back with more details of galaxies.
Note: I know I have not dealt in detail with the details of gravitational force, black holes, etc but is referring to them quite often. Don’t worry they will be explained in detail in coming episodes