We, Earthlings, are part of a galaxy called the Milky Way. The Sun is orbiting this galaxy with Earth and other planets in the solar system. The Milky Way can be seen if you take a look at the pollution-free sky of the village away from the city. Even if the moon does not rise or rise, the brightness is very low. Many stars have a long line and the brightness of the stars in this line is also high. It would seem that this line or system surrounds the whole sky, this is the Milky Way galaxy. In fact, it is part of the Milky Way. But the question is why the name of the galaxy? Why is the name of the galaxy in the name of food? And why is there so much milk?
The name of the galaxy is not usually like this. As many new galaxies, stars, and planets are discovered, they are scientifically named. However, there are some galaxies or stellar objects that even ancient humans could distinguish. The galaxy is actually a combination of many stars, they may not have known it. But it was clear that these were different from other ordinary stars in the sky. They gave different names to these special objects living in the sky.
They considered these objects in the sky as gods and goddesses and named them accordingly.
The planet we know as Venus was Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. There is a galaxy called Andromeda, named after a goddess in Greek mythology. Scientifically the name of the Andromeda Galaxy is M31. The name Milky Way also comes from mythology.
In Greek mythology, Zeus and his wife Hera are the kings of the gods. Unbeknownst to Hera, Devaraja Zeus had an affair with a mortal woman. A boy was born in the womb of that woman. This child's name is Hercules. According to mythology, the gods of the heavens are immortal, and mortals are mortal. The father is immortal and god, while the mother is a mortal and an ordinary man. In this dichotomy, Hercules has neither become immortal, nor mortal, nor man, nor god. Read in the middle.
But there is a way to be a complete god and immortal. If Hercules is given the motherhood of Hera, the goddess of the heavens, and is breastfed, she will be immortal. At the same time get the respect of the gods. For that, the god Zeus brought his child to heaven. But the goddess Hera, the wife of Zeus, bent down. By no means do I want to convey that I recommend for the mother to be inactive.
Hercules in sculpture
Hercules Juan Eduardo De Cristofaro in sculpture
Seeing no way out, Zeus thought of another way. When Hera is asleep, she will take the opportunity to feed Hercules. When he went to breastfeed in his sleep, Hera woke up at one point and quickly removed her breasts from the baby Hercules. Due to the haste, some milk dripped from the breast at the moment of release and spread all over the sky.
If a small hole is made in the milk in a large container, the milk will continue to flow in a long stream through the hole. The tiny milk particles will scatter and form a white-white pattern. This is exactly what happened to the milk produced by the goddess Hera. White-white milk churns. This method or road made from milk was called the ‘milk method’ or ‘milkway’ by the people of that time. But the whole story is mythical. It has no real basis.
The name Milky Way comes from the Roman word. The Romans named this galaxy Via lactea. This means the road of milk. However, the Romans were not the first to give such names. The Romans got the word from the Greek word galaxias kyklos. This means the Milky circle.
It's normal for the Milky Way galaxy to imagine such a story. Because it looks quite bright and a bit like milk. The procedure is also very long. There are seven or eight other galaxies, such as the Milky Way, whose names are an exception.
One name for the Milky Way galaxy in each area. Because it can be seen from all over the world. So it is normal for people in different areas to have different names. In India, the name of the galaxy is 'Akashganga'. To the skywatchers of ancient India, it looked like a river. According to their belief, the Ganges exists in the mortal world and in the sky at the same time. The ‘Akash Ganga’ of the sky and the ‘Ganga’ of the land flow in the same stream. That is why the river Ganges is revered in traditional religions.
The part that was named after the Milky Way is not the Milky Way at all, but only a small part of it. The Milky Way galaxy is spiral. Its diameter is about one lakh light-years. If one travels 300,000 kilometers per second 24 hours a day without any break, it will take one lakh years to get from the head of the Milky Way to the head. If people at the time knew about the original spiral shape and extent of this galaxy, it would probably never have been called the Milky Way.
Source: Mental Floss, Live Science, Today I Found Out, Kora Q&A
* The article was published in the May 2016 issue of Science Thought
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