Our Place in the World Wide Universe

Credit image: own creation.

Taking a step back from our day-to-day activities can sometimes have an invigorating effect, as it allows us to pause for a moment, reflect on where we stand, and see where we want to go from there.

This article gives a literal spin to this reflective exercise: Where do we actually stand in the broader Universe? We know that our home planet is whizzing around the Sun and that our Solar System forms part of the Milky Way Galaxy. But what lies beyond that?

Let us pause for a while and have a look at what researchers have discovered so far regarding our place in this world wide Universe.

Our Sun-Powered Backyard

The structure we are probably most familiar with is the Solar System, in which eight planets dwell in a flat disk around the Sun. The four innermost planets closest to the Sun are called the terrestrial or rocky planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Once having crossed the Main Asteroid Belt, i.e., an area of asteroids circling around the Sun past the orbit of Mars, we find the four outer planets: two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune).

The reason why the inner planets are rocky relative to the outer ones is that during the formation of the Solar System (which arose roughly 4.6 billion years ago from a mixed cloud of…