How big is the universe?

[Beethoven]

The Universe in perspective:
The region of space simulated was a cube with about 2.4 billion light years as its length (less than 1.5% of the OBSERVABLE universe)! This volume was populated by about 20 million "galaxies". A super computer, located in Garching, Germany, executed the simulation code for more than a month. The output of the simulation needed about 25 Terabytes for storage.

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1 Mpc = 3,261,636.26 light years
e.g. The Andromeda Galaxy (our nearest neighbor galaxy) is 0.77 Mpc away from the Earth.


Each dot is a galaxy like our own Milky Way galaxy:



Original image:
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/seqB_063.jpg




The Milky Way galaxy in perspective:
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The interactive image shown in the video:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/mediaimages/zooms/ssc2008-11a/index.html







Solar System and other stars WITHIN the Milky Way galaxy in perspective:

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/1023/111aby.jpg

The Fomalhaut system (the typical planetary system in our Milky Way galaxy) compared to our Solar system (scale):


367 exoplanets discovered thus far WITHIN the Milky Way galaxy
http://www.planetary.org/exoplanets/list.php?pp=0



Sounds of space (scary):

planets
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pulsars, neutron stars, black holes, etc...
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Life on Earth and in the universe in perspective:
-Life has been on this planet for* 3.7 billion years and humans have been on this planet for only 200,000 years, which means we make up only 0.0054% of life's history on earth.

-Earth's total mass is ~5.9736×10^24 KG while the total biomass on Earth is ~7×10^13 KG, which means the percentage of life on earth is 0.00000000117% (majority of Earth's biomass resides undersea sustained by the heat of Earth's core and not the Sun's radiation).

-The solar system's* total mass is ~1.98892×10^30 KG while earth's mass is ~5.9742×10^24 KG, which means the earth makes up 0.0003% of the solar system.

-The Milky Way galaxy has a mass of ~200 billion solar masses which means our solar system makes up only 0.0000000005% of the Milky Way galaxy.

-The known universe is composed of less than 2% baryonic matter (matter consisting of protons, neutrons, and electrons... the stuff we, the earth, solar system, and galaxy are made of), which makes dark matter the most common form of matter in our universe and shows that our universe is far more suited for the creation of black holes.

-Our Sun is a third generation star, meaning the previous stars could of collapsed the wrong way and never of made the Sun and our solar system, therefore we never existing. And this isn't uncommon, by our standards the majority of star systems are failed star systems.

-Most (95%) of the "normal" baryonic matter in the universe is in the form of multi-million-degree "hot cluster gas" that forms an intergalactic medium in clusters of galaxies. So in the Universe as a whole, there is 20 times as much hot intergalactic plasma as there are stars. Stars are an accident.

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http://www.worldometers.info/



Your life in perspective:
In a 70 year lifetime (70 orbits around a ball of hydrogen) the average human heart beats 2.52 billion times. 70 years = 37,000,000 minutes = 614,000 hours.
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(your heart pumps iron, and iron comes from the core of stars... dead stars)

Yeah, basically the universe is awesome, but it doesn't care if you exist.

[evilpeta]

tcm
seriously, i dig this shit

[NuclearSilo]

k thx for sharing

[TheKnight]

I nearly understood everything...

[inky]

tcm
seriously, i dig this shit

[Mirosuke]

We knew already the universe is big.
But i think this was posted before

[*BlackFox]

Holy crap. Nice find

How big is the universe?

I would assume, it's pretty big.. lulz

[Deadsolid]

Quick Astronomy lesson for you all.

The universe is infinite. It will keep expanding forever. The thing is light does not travel fast enough for us to see the expansion. So what we see today actually happened a long, long time ago (millions of years) at the place you are observing (kind of like how it takes 8 minutes or so for the light from the sun to hit earth, but on a much more grand scale).

[Squirt]

Its over 9000 lightyears.

[NuclearSilo]

The universe is infinite. It will keep expanding forever.

If smt could expand => It has a limit, an edge => the universe is finite => you contradict yourself.

On topic: it's as big as your imagination is

[Gaigemasta]

The universe is infinite. It will keep expanding forever.

If smt could expand => It has a limit, an edge => the universe is finite => you contradict yourself.

On topic: it's as big as your imagination is

Actually if the universe is infinite it is, because it will expand forever but it does have a limit at one time but then another the edge isn't there, it is a very confusing event. But some scientist say the universe expands and contracts over time, we just don't know yet

[LillDev!l]

Nice beat righ there Vega Pulsar

[Jerk]

nice of you to put this together tho, astrology is an interesting filed

[LazyJohny]

But i think this was posted before

Yea that big ass pic from the stars is on some older topic

[Sav]

good job on copy pasting? i just wish i was able to live long enough to see the Andromeda/milky way collide and see it in the skies, but too bad..beh

[Jstar1]

once humans invent lightspeed engines it will be a long time until we conquer even our galaxy.

and those morons who say life exists only on earth need to go back to 9th grade. There is no way that among 10000000000000000 stars there isn't a planet that has similar characteristics as earth and has living things on it

[Sav]

once humans invent lightspeed engines it will be a long time until we conquer even our galaxy.

and those morons who say life exists only on earth need to go back to 9th grade. There is no way that among 10000000000000000 stars there isn't a planet that has similar characteristics as earth and has living things on it

i doubt humans will ever be able to invent an engine that can go at the speed of light let alone the human body even being able to handle such speeds

if ever it's possible to travel great distances, it would somehow have to be done with a wormhole/instant point-to-point, though making that into reality sounds even more ridiculous than a piece of machinery capable of light speed

[XemnasXD]

once humans invent lightspeed engines it will be a long time until we conquer even our galaxy.

and those morons who say life exists only on earth need to go back to 9th grade. There is no way that among 10000000000000000 stars there isn't a planet that has similar characteristics as earth and has living things on it

i doubt humans will ever be able to invent an engine that can go at the speed of light let alone the human body even being able to handle such speeds

people said the same thing about the modern monorail....

Everything that humans can imagine is a possibility in reality....

[Jstar1]

once humans invent lightspeed engines it will be a long time until we conquer even our galaxy.

and those morons who say life exists only on earth need to go back to 9th grade. There is no way that among 10000000000000000 stars there isn't a planet that has similar characteristics as earth and has living things on it

i doubt humans will ever be able to invent an engine that can go at the speed of light let alone the human body even being able to handle such speeds

if ever it's possible to travel great distances, it would somehow have to be done with a wormhole/instant point-to-point, though making that into reality sounds even more ridiculous than a piece of machinery capable of light speed

no I think humans can invent such an engine. Just takes a lot of time. The only problem is about time becoming slower as you go faster away from the earth or that theory of relativity that einstein thought up. So you could travel at lightspeed for a year and then come back to earth and it will be like 100 years later and everyone you knew are dead

[Sav]

once humans invent lightspeed engines it will be a long time until we conquer even our galaxy.

and those morons who say life exists only on earth need to go back to 9th grade. There is no way that among 10000000000000000 stars there isn't a planet that has similar characteristics as earth and has living things on it

i doubt humans will ever be able to invent an engine that can go at the speed of light let alone the human body even being able to handle such speeds

people said the same thing about the modern monorail....

Everything that humans can imagine is a possibility in reality....

nvm...updated in a while

[Deadsolid]

The universe is infinite. It will keep expanding forever.

If smt could expand => It has a limit, an edge => the universe is finite => you contradict yourself.

On topic: it's as big as your imagination is

Actually if the universe is infinite it is, because it will expand forever but it does have a limit at one time but then another the edge isn't there, it is a very confusing event. But some scientist say the universe expands and contracts over time, we just don't know yet

Like gaige said, its confusing. if you were to go to the so called edge, and tried to touch it like you would touch a wall that defines a room, the universe would expand to fit your finger, so it really it has no boundries.

I took astronomy last year and its kind of a shame that i cant remember how to explain this more clearly. Like gaige said its really confusing.

[w00t]

question for the people who think that the universe isnt infinite:

How does it end? There cant be an end. Maybe the universe is a circle? Maybe the end is its start

[/Pi]

Carl Sagan is my hero.

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[Ashikiheyun]

This looks really awesome and I need to set aside a good chunk of time to watch and look at all the information presented.

Anyway, NS, you're wrong, again. I'm not going to give proof since you never are assed to give proof yourself.

And about traveling the galaxy/universe. Stargates

[ZaKnighT]

who cares... good information thnks for sharing but read some thing more usful that how large is the unvi cuz simple the answer will be

I would assume, it's pretty big.. lulz

[IceCrash]

our mind will never be able to understand unniverse's greatness

that's why we say it's infinite.

[Love]

there is actually "nothing" and this ironically is a pretty tough concept to grasp.

[Goseki]

Travelling at light speed is currently thought to be simply too dangerous since our current laws of physics break down and so do our bodies.

Another issue is just how well do we know the universe. I've thought about it before, but here's a good analogy. Say instead of a 4d world which we live in, such as up/down, left/right, forward/back, and time, we lived in a 3d world. Let's take away our up/down. Basically we would be living on a piece of paper. Now say the paper extends for what seems like forever. We could travel along it at the speed of light, but even than that could take millions of years to get there, even with time dilation. Now if we had the ability to go 4d, we could just wrap the infinitely long paper around and jump around from one point to the next.

In order to fully conquer space, I think we truly need some new physics that will allow movement in a whole new dimensions. Anything in our current understanding is too primitive. True instant transmission.

[Deadsolid]

Travelling at light speed is currently thought to be simply too dangerous since our current laws of physics break down and so do our bodies.

I understand that traveling at light speed is impossible, though you are right, the sheer speed should rip apart anything we can build today.

FYI to everyone else: Nothing goes faster than light. Sorry, no hyperspace.

[Sav]

Travelling at light speed is currently thought to be simply too dangerous since our current laws of physics break down and so do our bodies.

I understand that traveling at light speed is impossible, though you are right, the sheer speed should rip apart anything we can build today.

FYI to everyone else: Nothing goes faster than light. Sorry, no hyperspace.

even if we humans were able to find a way to travel at the speed of light (or faster), it still won't get you far from Earth, it would take you something like 100k years traveling at that speed just to cover the distance between one end of the milky way to the other and let alone visiting our nearest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, which is 2.5 million years away.

as said, dimensional travel will probably the only possible solution (as far as it would be known upto now)