How Big Is the Milky Way Galaxy?
The distance our solar system travels to complete one lap around the Milky Way galaxy is nearly 2 billion times the distance the Earth travels around the Sun. Wow!
This week’s number, 1.608×1018 km, is a big number. Which makes perfect sense since this week’s Math Dude article is about how to read and write big numbers using scientific notation.
If you need a scientific notation refresher, I encourage you to check out that article. But all you really need to know to appreciate the immensity of this number is that:1.608×1018 km = 1,608,000,000,000,000,000 km
Which, obviously, is a lot of kilometers! What exactly is this distance? It’s the distance that the Solar System (within which we happily reside) travels as it completes one lap around the Milky Way galaxy. Read More »