Is it possible that the picture of the Milky Way drawn by humans based on imagination is wrong? It's not all imagination

What does the Milky Way look like?

From the picture of the Milky Way, it looks like a flat disk, but the picture of the Milky Way is not a real picture, but a drawing based on human imagination. Since it is imagination, is it possible that we have drawn the Milky Way wrong? This possibility certainly exists, but the picture of the Milky Way is not entirely based on imagination. In the more than 300 years since the birth of modern science, human civilization has achieved leapfrog development, which is incomparable to any previous period. We can build space stations in space and set foot on other planets in person, but it is undeniable that our strength seems very small in front of the universe.

We currently have no way to break out of the solar system, but there are hundreds of billions of star systems like the solar system in the Milky Way, which shows how big the Milky Way is.

Obviously, we don’t have the ability to take a real photo of the Milky Way now or for a long time in the future, so if we want to appreciate the appearance of the Milky Way, we can only draw it ourselves, but drawing cannot rely solely on imagination, but also on a basis. What is the basis? Hypothesis, observation and data analysis. In the scientific community, many theories are born from hypotheses, especially in the astronomical community. The first person to hypothesize the shape of the Milky Way was the British physicist Herschel, who believed that the Milky Way looked like a flat disk.

Herschel's hypothesis seems very surprising today because it is completely correct based on the data we have now, but it was proposed in the 18th century.

There was actually no special reason why Herschel proposed this hypothesis. He came to this hypothesis through his own long-term observations and theoretical calculations. However, in the 18th century, human astronomical observation methods were relatively backward, and the theoretical system of physics was not yet perfect. The conclusions drawn lacked sufficient evidence support, so they could only be called hypotheses.

Later facts indeed proved that Herschel's hypothesis was wrong.

Herschel guessed the shape of the Milky Way, but he didn’t guess our position in the Milky Way. Through his own observations and calculations, Herschel believed that the solar system was located at the center of the Milky Way. In fact, this is not the case. According to modern observations, the solar system is not at the center of the Milky Way, but is in a relatively remote location. Even if we don’t observe now, we can recognize the error of this assumption, because it is impossible for a planet with life to exist in the densely populated area at the center of the Milky Way. It is too busy there, and collisions of celestial bodies are commonplace.

So, are we now completely sure of the shape of the Milky Way? Not yet.

Compared with the past, human astronomical observation technology has made a qualitative leap. For example, we can let radio telescopes around the world observe the same target at the same time, making it a virtual telescope with an aperture equivalent to the diameter of the earth, and combine the final observation data to obtain a black hole photo. This is already a great feat for mankind, but it is still a long way from taking a real picture of the Milky Way. However, advanced observation methods do provide us with more accurate data, and new data analysis and processing technologies also provide more powerful support for us to simulate the appearance of the Milky Way. But even so, we still cannot say that we can fully confirm the shape of the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is a flat disk, which is still a hypothesis at present, but there is more solid evidence for this hypothesis than in the past.

But assumptions are just assumptions after all, and they have not changed in essence. If we want to fully confirm the appearance of the Milky Way, we can only wait until the future when we are able to obtain a real photo of the Milky Way. However, no one knows how long we will have to wait for that day, because with our current level of scientific research and technological capabilities, we are still far away from it.

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