The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that is approximately 13.6 billion years old and has large pivoting arms that stretch across the cosmos. According to Las Cumbres Observatory, its disc is approximately 100,000 light-years across and only 1000 light-years thick. The solar system orbits the centre of the Milky Way in the same way that Earth orbits the sun. According to Interesting Engineering, despite travelling through space at speeds of around 515,000mph (828,000kmph), it takes our solar system approximately 250 million years to complete a single revolution. When our planet was in this position the last time, dinosaurs were just emerging and mammals had yet to evolve. If the Milky Way were a city, we'd be living in suburbia, about 25,000 to 30,000 light-years away. Life on the outskirts is good; we're in one of the smaller neighbourhoods, the Orion-Cygnus Arm, which is sandwiched between the larger Perseus and Carina-Sagittarius arms. The Scutum-Centaurus and Norma arms can be found if we travel inwards towards the city centre.
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