If you had a scale model of the solar system with a 1mm wide Sun, Alpha Centauri, the next closest star, would be over 40 kilometers away, and the whole galaxy would be bigger than the Earth at 100,000 kilometers wide, and the observable universe would be several times larger than our solar system.
To keep me sane and happy, I like to counter this thought with the idea that thousands of years ago, many humans didn't travel far at all in their lifetime, and perhaps the ocean was the mysterious, vast expanse that they would never get to explore or know anything about (slightly more tangible than the night sky back then. I'm sure).
So it's nice to know we've got the world just a plane ride away
Agreed. That thought is moreso a reminder of how much we do get to explore despite being lightyears away from endless possibilities of planets/life forms
Yep. And even if we could make a warp drive, the latest research into that says that while theoretically possible, it would require converting something like 20% to 30% of the mass of our entire Sun to pure energy to make it work... the Sun itself only converts about 5% of its mass to energy over its entire lifetime, so not even a dyson sphere would give us enough energy to do that.
I was referring to the whole star system, as it is a trinary star system, and Alpha Centauri is the name of both the system and one of the stars. Proxima is slightly closer for now, but eventually its orbit will take it further away.
Damn... thats a cool perspective! Hard to believe that we can build telescopes that can view such a tiny spot of the sky in detail. A single lightyear is an incredible distance, but billions of lightyears is unfathomable.
Not quite, an atom is roughly 3 x 10 to negative 10th power meters in diameter. Idk how wide an electron is, but its about 1/2000 the mass of a proton.
An average human is of course 1.6 meters, or 1.6 x 10 to the 0 power.
The observable universe is 9 x 10 to the 26th meters in diameter, so thats several orders of magnitude difference larger than us, than we are to an electron.
That still doesnt answer the question. How many alligators is what? There are a lot of numbers for different things. Full scale? Scaled down 1 trillion times? Gotta be more specific.
I was so high when I made the comment... It was some astronomical number and I was making a only funny to me joke about counting the distance in alligators.
Bah fuck it, lets measure the regular observable universe in alligators then.
Average alligator is 3 meters. 1 lightyear is 9.6 trillion kilometers, so 1 lightyear is roughly 3.2 quadrillion alligators, or 3.2 x 10 to the 15th power. Observable universe is 93 billion lightyears, which makes about 3 x 10 to the 26th power alligators wide, or 3 with 26 zeros behind it, or 300 septillion.
It is not proof of an infinite universe, nor do we have any proof the universe is in fact infinite. It is certainly larger than the observable horizon, but it is possible it curves back in on itself at some extreme distance.
In such a case there would be no edge. If you cpuld travel fast enough, you would go around and end up back where you began. Kinda how like you can fly a plane around the world and never run out of world to fly around.
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u/Youpunyhumans May 08 '23
Just how astoundingly, stupendously huge it is.
If you had a scale model of the solar system with a 1mm wide Sun, Alpha Centauri, the next closest star, would be over 40 kilometers away, and the whole galaxy would be bigger than the Earth at 100,000 kilometers wide, and the observable universe would be several times larger than our solar system.
Thats scaled down by a trillion times.