When dinosaurs roamed the Earth, she was on the other side of the milky Way

In Addition to the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, when no other giant lizards from space is not observed. But that all changed at the end of 2019, when a researcher from NASA has combined its animation and dinosaurs and space (sounds like the name of the film «Cowboys and aliens»). In the past ten years, Christiansen was looking for an answer to the question about how many planets and what are their types – rocky or gaseous – are in the galaxy by studying the data obtained by the hunters ekzoplanete, for example, the mission of NASA «Kepler», «K2» and «TESS». Tell what is known about the travels of our planet in the milky Way.

a Journey through the milky Way

When we look at the night sky, we don't really think about the fact that it changes. Meanwhile, the fact that the motion of the Solar system in orbit indicate changes. So, the sky, saw dinosaurs, was completely different. The stars whose light we see today – his age is about 13 million years old – very young on a cosmic scale, and dinosaurs didn't even see him! Simply because these were born of a star after billions of years after the mass extinction. Jesse Christiansen came to the conclusion that when our planet roamed the stegosaurus, neighbors of the Sun was the star today on the opposite side of the milky Way. not surprisingly, this fact has attracted worldwide attention.

Writes , using a classic illustration of the milky Way – if you look at it from above – done senior research fellow California Institute of technology , Christiansen said that the creation of animations using PowerPoint, it took about four hours. She then recorded a screen video and shared it on Twitter.

I have always been interested in galactic archaeology, but I don't think this is what they meant.

Did you know that dinosaurs lived on the other side of the Galaxy?

— ???? Dr. Jessie Christiansen ???? (@aussiastronomer)

A little later the author of the video made corrections to the text: the plesiosaurus is not a dinosaur, and galactic orbit we pass every 250 million years, not 200 million years.

Your job Christiansen wanted to show that although astronomical timelines seem utterly different from our own, in fact, they coincide well enough with the archaeological. The animation shows that the Sun takes from 200 to 250 million years to orbit the galactic center, which is a Grand spiral envelope of the threat the middle, inhospitable to life.

Based on the current position of the Solar system in the galaxy and temporal scales that are shared in the animation, we essentially completed the orbit. The last time our solar neighborhood it was in this part of the galaxy at a time when the Earth just started to see the dinosaurs in the Triassic period. Then followed the Jurassic period, which lasted 55 million years, it was followed by the Cretaceous period, which lasted up until the asteroid on our planet not an asteroid fell Circulou 65 million years ago. Recently, scientists have finally proven that the dinosaurs became extinct because of the asteroid impact, .

how dinosaurs roamed the Earth 200-250 billion years ago?

Dinosaurs Such as stegosaurus, iguanodon and giganotosaurus lived in the early Cretaceous period when the Earth was on the other side of the Galaxy. Researchers estimate the duration of the Cretaceous, 79 million years. If you look at things in perspective, the Tyrannosaurus Rex lived on the Earth when the Solar system was part of the galaxy closest to our current position.

the Center of the milky Way, imaged in the infrared using the Spitzer Space Telescope

After the mass extinction 65 million years ago power on the planet was gradually captured mammals and we are still in this «phase», so to speak. At the end of the animation Christiansen asks the question: what will happen on our planet by the time when the Solar system completes one revolution in its orbit? Response

Despite the simplicity of the animation, it is important to understand that the astronomers are still studying how stars rotate around the galactic center. In the end, everything in our galaxy revolves around a black hole – Sagittarius A*, located at its center.

The Stars closer to the center of the galaxy rotate faster, while those that are in the outer regions, slower. Our Solar system is in one of the spiral arms of the Galaxy, and the whole sleeve is moving around the galaxy, along with other stars in the neighborhood.

The galaxy Itself is moving towards its nearest neighbor, the galaxy Andromeda. They are on a collision course and will meet in about 4 billion years. Although it sounds a bit cruel, galaxies are mostly empty space and the stars will not collide with each other. So, relatively speaking, the animation Christiansen brings us back to where we were from 200 to 250 million years ago. Isn't it cool?

the picture shows the dinosaur in one of the parks of Belgrade, Serbia, in February 2018.