Earth was on the other side of the galaxy when dinosaurs appeared
We know that the Sun is not in a fixed place in the galaxy, but revolves around a point in its center, a journey that takes about 250 million years to complete. And it is precisely-in part-thanks to the path of our star’s galactic orbit that the Earth sustains complex life, as it moves away from the inhospitable center of the galaxy, where life probably could not survive.
Now, NASA astrophysicist Jessie Christiansen, has revealed the time scale of dinosaurs, tracking its evolution and disappearance and creating a surprising animation that shows the Earth on the opposite side of the Milky Way during this time of the Mesozoic Era when dinosaurs walked the Earth.
The sense of time
Giant beasts roamed the Earth for approximately 177 million years ago an asteroid would lead to its eventual extinction. By tracking the movement of our solar system through the Milky Way, Christiansen has exposed that humans have been present on Earth barely five million years, less than 9% of the time dinosaurs have.
So just as the Earth revolves around the Sun, so does the Sun (with all the planets on its back) around the center of the galaxy. We’re moving at about 828,000 kilometers per hour, at a distance of approximately 28,000 light-years from the galactic center. You don’t need to do the calculations, approximately the estimates place between 225 and 250 million Earth years) the time it takes to complete an orbit around the galactic center of the Milky Way.
This huge amount of time reveals that, in addition, from the time of plesiosaurs (large swimming reptiles) to the extinction event that annihilated the last dinosaurs approximately 65 million years ago, The solar system has moved three-quarters of the galactic center.
In the video created by Christiansen, we see many scientific curiosities, such as, for example, that there is a greater time gap between stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex than between T. rex and us, Humanity.
The NASA expert claims that she created animation simply for fun during her off hours, nothing official, so it’s not about any NASA project related to dinosaurs and space-time. It’s just pure entertainment.
However, galactic motion is more complicated than what the researcher’s video shows. Not only do these objects move, but the other stars and planetary systems in the galaxy also move at different speeds and in different orbits (internal regions rotate faster than external ones, for example). Everything is much more complex. And, furthermore, we cannot forget that the galaxy itself is moving through space, slowly but inexorably approaching our neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy.
A spiral through the space
The expert comments that our tour is similar to making a spiral through space, so our neighborhood is different from the last time we were here.
The Earth, however, is not very different: it remains compatible with complex life, in part thanks to the path of the galactic orbit of our sun. When our solar system travels through the Milky Way, it does not approach the inhospitable center. It’s a powerful reason why dinosaurs, mammals, or any other form of life, are able to exist on our planet.
