The Size of Our Universe
I found this article that really puts the significance of our race into mind-boggling perspective. I cut parts out to shorten it up, original article/site can be found here.
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How old are you? You probably think you've been around a while, that your 20/30/40/50 years on this planet is quite a long time, that you've seen a lot of changes? On our time-scale, you're probably quite right. On the time-scale of this planet, in geological time, you might as well have never existed.
Mount Everest, the highest point on the planet, is composed of marine limestone. It used to be under the sea, but slowly, millimeter by millimeter, it has been pushed upwards (and continues to do so, as India collides with Asia). You might think a year is a long time, but can you even begin to comprehend the lifespan of Everest?
Our planet is one tiny insignificant rock orbiting one average, ordinary star in the outskirts of the Milky Way, itself just one ordinary galaxy among billions. When you look up into the night sky on a clear night, you can hardly see any stars at all. If you could see all of them, if our eyes were better and there was less dirt in the universe, the sky would be completely white. There would not be the smallest gap between the stars that you see
For every star that you can see, there are thousands of galaxies, each containing billions of stars. The Milky Way itself is an insignificant speck. Our solar system is an insignificant speck within that. This image was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, and the area of sky that is represents is approximately 1/30th the apparent diameter of the full moon. As you can see for yourself, it is packed with galaxies. Galaxies, not stars:
People think that we are somehow blessed or special, so of course the "Creator Of The Universe" must have set aside this little corner of the universe just for us, right? Religion used to teach that the Earth was the centre of the universe, the single most important place that God created.
Now, we know better. If the Earth was destroyed tomorrow, the universe would neither miss us nor mourn our passing. Would you notice one grain of sand missing from the beach?
We think we are special, and that supremely powerful beings look after us. We are not special; we are simply the result of a (probably very common) chemical accident billions of years ago, in a place where the conditions are right for life to flourish.
The same thing probably happens all over the universe, and in many places there will be life. Some will be more advanced than us, others less advanced. In many places, the conditions will not be right for life. There are probably entire galaxies or clusters of galaxies where life will never arise, because the conditions there are too extreme. Galaxies with super massive black holes, areas of stellar genesis (such as the Orion Nebula), maybe regions close to quasars may never produce life due to intense radiation or gravitational disturbances.
We are certainly lucky, yes, but special? No.
Just to make you feel really insignificant =), this is a scale diagram of Earth, Jupiter (which is about ten times the diameter of Earth), and the Sun (about ten times the diameter of Jupiter). The tiny blue ball is where we are. This is where we fight our wars, worship our ten thousand different gods, kill each other over a few meters of territory, argue with our neighbors about exactly where the property line is, pollute our fine film of atmosphere (too small to show up on the picture), and live out our lives. The Earth is whizzing around the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour. By the time you've read this page we have traveled ten thousand miles together. Hope you enjoyed the trip!
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February 13th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
So thats freaking sweet! I love being insignificant! hahaha
The universe pisses me off.. Ill write this here and not on myspace since it seems to fit this blog you posted perfectly.
Why the Unvierse pisses me off…
I think of it like this…
We, People, non-poeple, animals, Creatures of Earth, Live in homes (most of us).
These “Homes†are in Towns.
Towns are in Cities.
Cities are in Counties.
Counties are in States.
States are in Countries.
Countries are on Contanants.
Our Contanants are on Earth.
Earth is in our Solar System.
SS is in the Milky Way, or Glaxy or whatever,
And then heres where I get pissed
What the fuck is all this shit in..???? And all the other Galaxies that you see out there as well…
Where or What for that matter, is our Galaxy, and everyone elses Galaxy in????
Hmmmmm
It drives me nutz…. Everything is in something.. if theres a limit, which there has to be right?
Where is it? And when you reach it, (If there indeed is a limit) What is that limit in?
hmmm WHAT IS IT IN…. I could go CRAZY…
I want to know whats it in…. OMG You dont knwo how bad this just erks me to my bones!
I could keep going…..
Everything is in something… right?
My water is in the bottle, My Feet are in my Flip Flops….HELLO… What are we in? Im going nutz! lol
any insight on that?
February 13th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Well, you left a few important things out. A “cluster” is what holds a group of galaxies near each other. Then there are superclusters that hold these clusters together. In between the superclusters are vast voids of nothingness in space. So the organization is definitely there!
Think of it this way. We as people do our own thing, but essentially revolve around the planet’s surface. The plan does it’s own thing (spins, atmosphere, etc.) while orbiting the sun. The sun does it’s own thing (burn, manipulate planets around itself etc) while it is actually dancing around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Our galaxy itself does all kinds of stuff internally, while externally, it is actually bounded near other galaxies in a “cluster” by gravity. The cluster itself drifts through space as a whole. Superclusters contain a LOT of galaxies. These superclusters themselves drift through the void that is our universe. The next level up I’d say would be our universe itself. That’s a pretty tight organization I would say! Ah yes, add to all of this, the predictions that our universe is just a speck on someone’s shoulder (not literally, but figuratively), and that our universe is just one of billions of other universes. Now you have a cosmic hierarchy of unimaginable proportions!
I think it drives you nuts so much because you don’t realize the scale of galaxies and how big they are! The scale is absolutely ridiculous in our universe and is not dense what so ever. It seems everything is separated by an insanely large sea of pure space void. Here, I’ll help you out (I had to look this part up):
- It takes light 1 seconds to circle our planet 7 times.
- It takes light about, I don’t know, 6-10 hours to cross the span of our solar system. (You see the huge scale?)
- It takes light about 100,000 YEARS to cross the span of our own galaxy. You see how insanely massive a single galaxy is??
- Now lump a bunch of these into a cluster/supercluster and light will take many, many 100’s of millions of years to cross it.
- Now lump a bunch of THESE into our universe, which is said to be like 150 billion light years across..
Now it’s hard to put all this into perspective & scale, but basically from the universe’s perspective, it sees a bunch of really really small things separated by an insane amount of distant. I mean.. it must be more or less like dropping random m&m’s around on a football field, with each m&m having a like 20 micro-organisms on it. From the m&m’s perspective, they are EXTREMELY far apart, and from the micro organism’s perspective, they are also extremely far apart. This is basically how we see the universe because we are so tiny and irrelevant. We are to universe as a single-celled organism is to this earth. The scale is just of behemoth size.
Two more things:
- When we look up at stars at night, we are seeing light that left the star a long time ago. The light from Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, takes 4 years to get here. When we look at the fuzzy circle of a distant galaxy, we are seeing light that left that galaxy at least 2 million years ago.
In Silver City, New Mexico, a side-walk solar system is being made. The entire solar system fits on a little over 1 mile of side-walk. Everything is scaled, so the Sun is only 1 and 1/2 feet across, and Pluto is the size of a pin head. This is just our tiny little solar system. If you wanted to do the Milky Way, this walk would extend to 187 million miles. So in other words, this walk would be a long as if we were to “walk” to the sun, and then back again. Yeah, the scale is absolutely unimaginable!