beeing able to create "cgi animated diagrams or artistic 3d renders" doesn't necessarily imply even a basic knowledge of astronomy1DeViLiShDuDe wrote:Most of what I've been commenting was shown on one or more of the Science channels, with cgi animated diagrams or artistic 3d renders
You somehow seem to find the wrong web pages thenand then I do a search online for the subject to see more information on the topic.
Maybe you should have tried this one: http://2012rising.com/article/the-galac ... 012-part-1 for example.
Usually this thing is called the Great Rift in astronomy. And as explained above, not the Sun is crossing the equator (since this is impossible), but the Great Rift (or part of it) is doing this. Here is an image of your famous "Dark Rift":About the sun traveling away from the 'Dark Rift'(disc/equator) - that's not what they were presenting, the way it was shown.|
. The colorful structure near the center is the Galactic Center and the black "river" extending from it is the Great/Dark Rift. It is basically a giant cloud (several thousands of light years across) composed of cold gas and dust. The reason it is dark is because it is a) cold (and barely emits radiation) and b) blocks the radiation of basically anything behind it. Therefore it would actually shield us from any "intense gamma radiation". Even though it appears that the Great Rift is located near the Galactic Center it is actually very far away from it. The Great Rift is several hundred light years away from us, while our distance to the Galactic Center is about 28000 light years. And the Sun is also not moving into that Great Rift either...The Sun actually makes an oscillatory movement along its galactic orbit. Here is an artistic impression:
which is a "bit" exaggerated. These oscillations are not as large as depicted there and the Sun won't get anywhere near the galactic disc in the next time. The current movement is still upwards, away from the discs centre. All these motions happen of course on astronomical timescales - e.g. it takes the Sun roughly 250 million years for one complete orbit around the galactic center.
