Some Perspective - or: Space is big...

by RedOranje Fri Jan 11, 2013 10:20 pm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130111092539.htm?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmost_popular+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Most+Popular+News%29

If memory serves, the Milky Way is around 100,000 light years in diameter... this quasar group is 4,000,000,000 light years across.

Some (very) rough math puts that at roughly 3.966 quintillion (3.966*10^18) Earths side by side.
3,966,000,000,000,000,000 earths

That's 2.182241e22 km, or 8.5915e29 miles in diameter.

Traveling at the fastest ever recorded flight speed in an aircraft (the SR-71, 2193.1 mph) it would take 3.917335e26 hours, 1.632223e25 days, or 4.471844e22 years.

44,718,440,000,00,0,000,000,000 years.

by bazinga Sat Jan 26, 2013 4:45 am

rwo power wrote:BTW, this is just beautiful. Shows how significant mankind aka the "creation's crowning glory" actually is:

Oh yes. I love that video. Also, the biggest star ever discovered (not in that video) is so big that light would take 6.7 hours to make a pass around it. Imagine that size. Or can you? Very Happy

And now remember that's just one star Very Happy

It's amazing how much is out there if we just looked beyond our own little planet.

by rwo power Sat Jan 26, 2013 4:52 am

R136a1 you mean? I defo wouldn't want to be anywhere near if that goes boom Very Happy

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1030/

by bazinga Sat Jan 26, 2013 5:06 am

No, that's most massive. NML Cygni, at 1650 times the size of the sun (holy *bleep* shitballs, 1650!!) is currently the biggest by size Smile

by rwo power Sat Jan 26, 2013 12:50 pm

o_O

This graphic has stars up to VY CMa...
Some Perspective - or: Space is big... Th-sta10

And that is VY CMa vs NML Cygni Shocked

Some Perspective - or: Space is big... Nml-cy11

More amazingly huge stars:

by bazinga Sat Jan 26, 2013 4:36 pm

So the biggest celestial body every discovered is 4 billion light years across. That's like a little less than a third the size of the known universe Wink

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50434185/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/largest-structure-universe-found-its-mind-boggling/

by rwo power Sat Jan 26, 2013 5:13 pm

Well, I think one can only quote Douglas Adams' "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" for that:

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..."

(...)

To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of distances between the stars, better minds than the one responsible for the Guide's introduction have faltered. Some invite you to consider for a moment a peanut in Reading and a small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such dizzying concepts.

The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination.

Even light, which travels so fast that it takes most races thousands of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between the stars. It takes eight minutes from the star Sol to the place where the Earth used to be, and four years more to arrive at Sol's nearest stellar neighbour, Alpha Proxima.

For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to reach Damogran for instance, takes rather longer: five hundred thousand years.

by Sponsored content

Some Perspective - or: Space is big...

Some Perspective - or: Space is big...

Re: Some Perspective - or: Space is big...

Re: Some Perspective - or: Space is big...

Huge Stars and Celestial Body Size

Re: Some Perspective - or: Space is big...

Re: Some Perspective - or: Space is big...

Re: Some Perspective - or: Space is big...

Re: Some Perspective - or: Space is big...