Lots of Time and Space

See that speck in the beam light.  The label next to it should read, "You are here."

Yep that is good old earth sitting in a sun beam and looking like a piece of dust.

                                                                 Lots of Time and Space

Here is an idea for the next time you feel you are big person who can do great things. Go to the nearest light switch, turn it on. How long did it take for you to see the light was on? Well as best as we can measure it, light travels at about 186,000 miles per second and if you are standing five feet away, well you can try to do the math but I will just say it is fast fast fast. Now think of traveling through space at that speed it would take you 8 minutes to reach the sun about 100 million miles away.   And if you wanted to go to pluto that would be about a 5 hour trip, and about 3650 million miles (or 3 ½ billion miles).   So in 5 light hours we can go 3650 million miles. I am going to try and give you an idea of how big that number is with a little comparison... OK it is a big comparison and is well known to all who live above ground. The sun is so big that it could hold 1 million earths inside it and is about 1 million miles across, given that, it would take 3650 suns lined up to get from earth to pluto.   Remember it takes a million earths to make one sun. Also remember that this is all just within our solar system.

Now we are going to go outside our solar system where all things are measured in light years. But before I start talking in such large terms think back to our “huge” solar system that takes about 10 hours to cross then think how far you could go in a day. Well about 1642 ½ days (4 ½ years) later you would end up at our nearest star Proxima. Here we will do some rough math and 3942 solar systems later we get to the closest star.

If you have done your astronomy you know that there are lots of stars and in our galaxy alone there are an estimated 200 to 300 billion stars. There is another big number that you may not quite grasp. A billion is a million 1,000 times. So it would look like this, 1,000,000,000. You get the idea, lots of stars in just our galaxy. And in the observable universe there are an estimated 100 billion(100,000,000,000) galaxies.

  Where were we? Oh yes the closest star, Proxima. From there we go on through our galaxy for year after year(mind you we are still going light speed) about 50,000 years later(depending on which direction you go) we get to the edge of our galaxy and if you do not feel small by now think this over, to get to the next nearest galaxy you will need to go for another 2 million years. 730,000,000 days later you have got to one of the estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe that we can see from earth.

Next up:  What to think about when you feel like a small person who is not important.

References are taken from: Privileged Planet and Wonders of Creation: The Book of Astronomy by: Dr. Jonathan Henry.