A Brief Explanation Of Distance

Discussion in 'Pandora's Box' started by HighlyHumble, Aug 29, 2014.

  1. #1 HighlyHumble, Aug 29, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 29, 2014
    We live on a planet. One of eight in our solar system. They all orbit an ordinary, unremarkable star. One of 300 billion in our galaxy. Which is one of 100 billion in the visible universe. Yes, I am aware that these are extremely big numbers. So big, that our human brains cannot fully comprehend them. You read numbers like 100,000,000,000 but you can't grasp the depth, the meaning behind it. We end up with a confused, or unaffected look on our face, and move on. But to understand what the universe is, we need to spend time trying to rationalize these numbers. Try to scale them down. Analogize them until they at least begin to make some sense. 
     
     
    So I'll start off with some realativily small distances, and gradually work my way up. Let's start with The voyager 1 and 2 space probes. These are 2 satallites launched in the year 1977, for the purpose of finding out more about the distant planets in our solar system. Planets like Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and at the time, Pluto(it's no longer classified as a planet). These Satallites, thanks to gravitational assitance from the planets, have accelerated to an incredible speed of about 40,000 miles per hour. Yes, another big number.. But we can re-word that speed to make it a tad more understandable. 11 miles per second. As of 2012, traveling for over 40 years, they have just reached the edge of our solar sytem. Hopefully this gives you some idea of how large our solar system really is. Enormous, right? Many people live there entire lives without contemplating it's size. It's enough to make you take a step back and wonder in awe at something so mind boggingly big. Hang in there...I haven't even scratched the surface, yet.
     
     
    With those satallites traveling at 11 miles per second, it would take them an astonishing 80,000 years to reach the closest star outside of our solar system. Bare with me here. This is where I may lose you, but that's okay. It takes awhile for numbers of this scale to sink in. They will though. 
    Distances between stars are so enourmous, that using measurements like meters, kilometers, or even miles is absolutely useless. For example; the closest star to our sun is 26 trillion miles away. That's a 26 with twelve zeros. When it comes to distances like this we use something called a light year.
    A light year is a very simple concept. It's the distance light travels in a single year. In the vacuum of space, light travels at a finite, constant speed. You may want to sit down for this one. Light travels at 186,000 miles per SECOND, or 300,000 km per second. To get a sense of this speed; Try to imagine that if you were traveling around the Earth at the speed of light, you could traverse it's circumference 7 times an a single second. Take a minute to let that soak in. Imagine all of the places you've been on Earth, and how long it took you to get there. Now imagine every place you haven't been, and add that estimated travel time to it. Now multiply that by 7, cram it all into a second, and you get a sense of just how stupendiously fast the speed of light is. Incredible, isn't it? What's even more amazing is that compared to the size of the Universe, it's actually extremely slow. Let me explain.
     
     
    The closest star to our sun is Alpha centauri, which is infact a binary sytem(2 stars orbiting each other), is 4 light years away. So to reiterate, if you were traveling at 186,000 mps, it would take you 4 years to travel the distance. And what's even more amazing, when you think about it, looking at that star from Earth, you see it as it was 4 years ago. It's like time traveling with your eyes. Now lets look at a star much further away. Betelguese. This is my all time favorite star, for reasons I won't get into now. It is roughly 600 light years away. That means, that the light photons that are hitting the back of your retinas when you look at Betelguese, left the surface of that star when Christopher Columbus set sail and discovered The New World. 
    Now that I have educated you in the apalling, and almost despairing distances between stars, lets move on to something far more larger. Our galaxy, The Milky Way. A monsterous structure made up of roughly 300 billion stars, all orbiting a super massive black hole. Try to imagine the distances between even our closest neighboring star, which takes the Voyagers 80,000 years to traverse, and keep in mind the 300 billion other stars in our galaxy when you do this. Our galaxy  has a diameter of 100,000 light years. Our sun is situated in a spiral arm about 26,000 light years out from the central buldge. Let those distances penetrate you. Mind boggling. They brought me to my knees in awe when I first understood a small fraction of that distance.
     
     
     But, I'm not done, yet.
    The closest neighboring galaxy is a much larger spiral galaxy named Andromeda. It has a diameter of over 200,000 light years, and is over 2000 light years thick. It contains an estimated 1 trillion stars. We are seperated from this monster of a galaxy by an incomprehensible 2.5 million light years. It's actually on a collision course with The Milky Way..But don't worry, it will take over 2 billion years before they engage in the act of Galactic Cannablism. These two galaxies belong to what's known as a galaxy cluster, which means exactly what the name says: a cluster of galaxies. It's called The Local Group, and it consists of 54 galaxies, Andromeda being the largest. It has a total diameter of roughly 10 million light years. Our Local Group is part of what's called a super cluster, which is a cluster of galaxy clusters. You still with me? The name is The Virgo Super Cluster, and it has a diamter of about 110 million light years. There are over a million super clusters in the known universe.
    I've used "the known or visible" universe quite a lot. So let me try and explain what that is. And yes, the distances get even bigger. Much, much bigger. Since light travels at a finite speed, we can only see so far into the universe. The Universe is much bigger that what we can see. But, currently there is no way of knowing how big that is, so lets not worry about that right now. Since the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, that's how long light has been traveling.. So it's logical to come to the conclusion that the visible universe is 13.7 billion light years in radius, or roughly 27 billion light years in diamter.. This is not the case.  Due to the expanding nature of the universe, when light leaves a galaxy, the universe is being stretched by it's expansion, ultimately making the light travel much further distances in the same amount of time. It may look like light is breaking the laws of physics, but it isn't. The reasons why are a little above my head, so I can't really do it justice in trying to explain it to you, but don't just take my word for it. Look it up... In fact that's what this paper is all about.
     
     
    For a large portion of my life, I never asked questions like "how big is the universe" or "how old is the universe", because my faith didn't allow those types of questions. Religion gave me those answers early in life, and threatened my curiosity and doubt with the scare tactic known as Hell. I was deprived at a very young, vournerable and curious age of the amazing facts about the universe. When I began to question them, and when I began to find answers, the less and less I needed a God to account for it all. Ultimately, when you let go of your faith, you gain much more of a sense of who you are, because all of this: Planets, stars, galaxies, clusters, super clusters, black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, are all part of the universe just as much as you are. And more importantly, the universe is part of you. If there is a God, then it is logical to assume that he created all  of this. Why on Earth would he want you to remain ignorant to all of these wonderfully beautiful things? Think about it.
     
    "It's like the Universe screams in your face: 'Do you know what I am? How grand I am? How old I am? Can you even comprehend what I am? What are you compared to me?' And when you know enough science, you can just smile up at the universe and reply, 'dude, I am you' "
    [​IMG]
    This is a picture of the observable universe.
    Each point of light is an entire galaxy cluster.
    The visible Universe is approximately 93 billion light years in diameter. 
    93,000,000,000 light years. Are you fucking kidding me?
    I guess we'll just have to adjust.

     
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  2. Tl;DR
    The universe is far bigger than you, me or anyone one could possibly understand, so learn about it because it's a part of you
     
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  3. scarry
     
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  4. Right? We're so far away from everything. It's like being adrift in a sea on a life raft that's running out of supplies 
     
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  5. Uh thanks for the refresher.
     
  6. great read. I love astronomy so much.
     
  7. God has made an amazing creation,

    I saw a video where our sun is the size of the earth compared to the next star in our solar system and so on, and so on
     
  8. I can't help but think the universe could have been made better. It's like a desert. Interesting to look at for a while but it's actually quite inhospitable.
     
  9. #11 Dr. Sheldon Cooper, Aug 30, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 30, 2014
    I think the millions of species inhabiting this planet would disagree with you.

    The fact that all of this happened because of the vastness of the universe and the seemingly "inhospitable" and destructive nature is just, beautiful.
     
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  10. #12 The Botanist, Aug 30, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 30, 2014
     
    As if the millions could disagree.
     
    All I'm saying is that it would great to frequently find intelligent life on most planets within a given solar system. The art is good - it just needs more color, ya dig?
     
  11. So if the universe is so huge, important, and, when personified, screaming at us to notice it (because large and in existence equates to a necessity of acknowledgement, of which we are absolutely certain), and you are part of the universe, are you still so humble?
     
    Relatively so? Relative to a depth the human mind can't perceive? Your humility is so deep, no human mind can perceive it?
     
    Damn, I'm swimming in some depth here. :smoke:
     
  12. This universe was made for us to explore in the physical form which seems empty, if you could see the spiritual side the universe would be full of angels an you would see more light than dark
     
  13. What if outside our universe was another universe with an earth-like planet like ours where life of some sort was active and what if those beings think they are the only form of life in the galaxy....just like we do?
     
  14. bitches be crazy lol

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  15. What if they found a hospitable planet to expand their society, brought homo sapiens to earth and wiped out the neanderthals?

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  16. F U!
    ImageUploadedByGrasscity Forum1409427701.421535.jpg
     
  17. #19 HitTheVapeGetBaked, Aug 30, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 30, 2014
    I saw your post though=D
    Nah but im j/k. I only disagree with you on the view that this was made for us to explore, I think we were just an accidental byproduct. none of this was made for us particularly, but we were made as a result of this.

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  18. Nothing happens randomly,
     

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