Everything We Know About the Milky Way Might Be Wrong

[00:00:00]Have you ever stopped to think about this?

[00:00:02]Every time we look at those stunning photos of the Milky Way, the ones with the bright galactic core, the elegant spiral arms, the glowing bands of stars and dust, we are immediately impressed.

[00:00:16]But here is the thing that rarely crosses our minds.

[00:00:19]How can we even be sure that those images are accurate?

[00:00:23]Think about it. We are living inside the Milky Way. We have never sent a camera outside our galaxy. We have no spacecraft that has traveled [music] far enough to look back and take a selfie of our cosmic home.

[00:00:36]So, how do we know what our galaxy really looks like? How can we confirm that it is a spiral disc with arms and not something completely different?

[00:00:45]To get a true front view photo of the Milky Way, we would have to send a telescope to a location hundreds of light-years away, or even [music] thousands of light-years, just to capture clear images and observe its detailed structure from the outside.

[00:01:00]That is not going to happen anytime soon.

[00:01:03]And yet, astronomers claim they know the shape of our galaxy. Are they guessing?

[00:01:08]Or is there a clever way to figure it out without ever leaving our cosmic backyard? [music] Hello everyone, and welcome back to Academy of the Universe. Today, you are going to get all the answers.

[00:01:21]How did we discover that the Milky Way has the shape of a spiral disc with arms? Let's get started.