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Questions and Answers
How far away is the sun from the Milky Way's center?
How far away is the sun from the Milky Way's center?
- 16,000 light-years
- 26,000 light-years (correct)
- 36,000 light-years
- 46,000 light-years
What was the cloud of dust and gas that collapsed to form the sun called?
What was the cloud of dust and gas that collapsed to form the sun called?
- A nebula (correct)
- An asteroid
- A comet
- A supernova
What do scientists observe around distant young cousins of the sun?
What do scientists observe around distant young cousins of the sun?
- Asteroids
- Nebulae
- Planets (correct)
- Supernovae
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Study Notes
- The sun is a star and resides some 26,000 light-years from the Milky Way's center.
- Every 230 million years, the sun makes one orbit around the Milky Way's center.
- The sun formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, when a cloud of dust and gas called a nebula collapsed under its own gravity.
- As it did, the cloud spun and flattened into a disk, with our sun forming at its center.
- The disk's outskirts later accreted into our solar system, including Earth and the other planets.
- Scientists have even managed to see these planet-birthing disks around our sun's distant young cousins.
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