I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over a few months. I started small and am working my way up.
The Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).
1019 MAGNITUDE
10,000,000,000,000,000,000 m
1,000 Light-years
Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy
Nearly 10,000 Light-years
The Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (Sag DEG), if you can call anything almost 10,000 light-years in diameter “dwarf,” is a loop-shaped satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Currently about 70,000 light-years from Earth, Sag DEG travels in a polar orbit around the Milky Way at a distance of about 50,000 light-years from its core.
Astronomers believe that Sag DEG has been in orbit around the Milky Way for billions of years, and has already orbited it approximately 10 times. Its ability to retain its galactic coherence despite such orbital strains would indicate an unusually high concentration of dark matter within the galaxy.
Dark matter is a type of matter hypothesized to account for a large part of the total mass in the universe. Dark matter cannot be seen directly with telescopes. It gets its name because it neither emits nor absorbs light or other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level. Instead, its existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter, radiation, and the large-scale structure of the universe. This series of blog posts is about objects that increase in size 10x with each post. Here we have an object whose size is theoretical instead of being based solely on what is seen.
Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.
Previous posts on this topic include:
- 10-15 Protons and Neutrons
- 10-14 Atomic Nucleus of a Uranium Atom
- 10-13 Nada, Zilch, Zero, Zip
- 10-12 Gamma Rays
- 10-11 Fluorine Ion
- 10-10 Wavelength of Hard X-Rays
- 10-9 Carbon Nanotubes
- 10-8 Molecular Transport Nano Robot
- 10-7 HIV Virus
- 10-6 Red Blood Cells
- 10-5 Sand
- 10-4 Microelectromechanical Systems
- 10-3 Sonata Silicium Watch Components
- 10-2 Lego
- 10-1 Prosthetic Fairing
- 100 Biome Concept Car
- 101 Ma'erkang Housing Reconstruction
- 102 Shanghai Tower
- 103 Bay Bridge
- 104 Masdar City
- 105 Palm Islands
- 106 The Moon
- 107 Earth
- 108 Jupiter
- 109 The Sun
- 1010 Distance Light Travels in 34 Seconds
- 1011 Distance from Jupiter to the Sun
- 1012 Distance from Pluto to the Sun
- 1013 Voyager 2
- 1014 The Solar System
- 1015 Cat's Eye Nebula
- 1016 Pillars of Creation
- 1017 Great Orion Nebula
- 1018 M15 Globular Cluster
Future blog posts will cover:
- 1020 Triangulum Galaxy
- 1021 The Milky Way
- 1022 IC 1101
- 1023 Local Group of Galaxies
- 1024 The Local Supercluster
- 1025 3C 273
- 1026 Outer Limit of the Universe
Measurement is alive in the lab.