"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly 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"
--The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams says you can blow someone's mind just by showing them how big the universe is -- and how small they are in comparison. In real life, most of us can't ever quite grasp the sheer enormity of the universe. It's even hard for those who study it regularly. An astronomer recently told me: "You don't ever really get your head around it. You just kind of get used to it."
The vast size of the universe is one reason why it's so neat to think that each of us is made of parts that were made when the universe was born -- see, we're not so insignificant after all. We're made of the very stuff that all the galaxies and stars are made of too.
But, it's still true that we're crazy small when compared to the whole thing. Just to give you an idea of how mind bogglingly big the universe is, here's a few numbers:
One Astronomical Unit (or AU) = the distance to the sun, which is 93,000,000 miles away.
One Parsec (or pc) = the distance to the nearest star, which is 206,265 Astronomical Units.
The distance to the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 8000 parsecs.
The distance to a nearby galaxy, Andromeda galaxy, is 100 times that distance.
And the distance to the edge of the observable universe is 5000 times the distance to Andromeda. . .
So what does that equal? How many miles away is the edge of the universe? Write me a comment and let me know what number you come up with!
