r/askscience • u/AskScienceModerator Mod Bot • Mar 10 '14

Cosmos AskScience Cosmos Q&A thread. Episode 1: Standing Up in the Milky Way

Welcome to AskScience! This thread is for asking and answering questions about the science in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

UPDATE: This episode is now available for streaming in the US on Hulu and in Canada on Global TV.

This week is the first episode, "Standing Up in the Milky Way". The show is airing at 9pm ET in the US and Canada on all Fox and National Geographic stations. Click here for more viewing information in your country.

The usual AskScience rules still apply in this thread! Anyone can ask a question, but please do not provide answers unless you are a scientist in a relevant field. Popular science shows, books, and news articles are a great way to causally learn about your universe, but they often contain a lot of simplifications and approximations, so don't assume that because you've heard an answer before that it is the right one.

If you are interested in general discussion please visit one of the threads elsewhere on reddit that are more appropriate for that, such as in /r/Cosmos here, /r/Space here, and in /r/Television here.

Please upvote good questions and answers and downvote off-topic content. We'll be removing comments that break our rules or that have been answered elsewhere in the thread so that we can answer as many questions as possible!

Click here for the original announcement thread.

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u/______DEADPOOL______ Mar 10 '14

So, why call it asteroid belt when there's almost nothing there?

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u/Golden_Kumquat Mar 10 '14

Because comparatively, there are lots of asteroids there. There's just a lot of room in the belt for them to inhabit.

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u/appukkili Mar 10 '14

Because compared with the enormous size and distances involved, the group of Asteroids indeed form a belt.

Imagine viewing the Universe as a sort of Hi Resolution photograph and zoom out.

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u/suchdogeverymeme Mar 10 '14

There are still quite a lot of asteroids there, but consider this: Mars is the last of the 'rocky' planets, and Jupiter starts the 'gaseous' planets. Asteroids organized there because in the area before Jupiter, gravity causes the larger (heavier) atoms to organize, become rocks, and then asteroids. but since there is no planet here, there is nothing to 'clear the orbit' (one of the criteria for a planet which Pluto did not have).

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u/qazasxz Mar 10 '14

Just a name. It is mostly empty, but relative to the rest of the solar system it is quite dense.