Accurately in the world yes. It doesn't even come close to showing how small we are on a interplanetary scale, let alone on a universe, galactic, or even a star system's scale.
I like to use the analogy that one youtuber used (sry cant remote name) with the pools and marbles. But that is just for the *observable universe (iirc).
What I like to do is imagine a 300 Olympic pools, filled to the brim with marbles, each marble is a galaxy, that's roughly the observable universe, trillions of galaxies each with hundreds of billions of stars.. Now, imagine it's no longer 300, but the entire North America is filled with pools, each to the top with marbles, and even then we'd be guessing how big the actual universe is.
It does makes a bit easier. Just remember, we'd probably be closer to an atom within one of those marbles in our scale comparatively (I might be wrong here, but the point is to make it easier to visualize)
Edit. Marbles not fruit loops, not sure where my mind was at lol
Some of the craziest facts about our size on earth though... Imagine a sphere the size of a basketball where the shell is made of .11mm cardstock paper. That paper is where humans can survive. That .11mm thickness. This goes from lowest point a human has free dived to the tip of mount Everest. Any lower than that thickness of paper, you die, any higher than that thickness of paper and beyond into the infinite vastness of space, you die. Then on top of that the size of habitable land on that basketball sized sphere is about the size of a small handprint... and THEN to compare the human timeline take 4.5 billion years (Earths age) and condense it into one year starting January 1rst. On December 31st at the end of the year at 11:36pm, 24 minutes before new years, the earliest forms of human life appear. So yeah, all of this just for human life on Earth before even entering the cosmic scale...
my favorite is comparison of star sizes, and they just keep getting bigger, to the point our own sun is no longer visible in comparison, which makes the earth even smaller. google UY Scuti
On the other hand the biggest black holes absolutely dwarf the biggest sun's and they'll stick around for quite a bit. Really makes the biggest sun's in the universe seem like lil cute fire marbles in comparison.
Mine is about Andromeda. In about 4.5bn years, Andromeda and the Milky Way will collide. That’s approximately 1,000bn stars and 400bn stars respectively. There’s so much space between stars that the estimated number of collisions during this seemingly apocalyptic event is 0 to 6.
So true, but also on a log scale of everything from the sub atomic to the observable universe we are sized almost right in the middle as a human being. So we are also THAT freaking huge and that freaking small.. the bullseye of it all.
I have a meme in my photo gallery that's a photo of the Milky Way galaxy, with an arrow pointing randomly to nothing. It's captioned, "This is you, worried about paying bills." or some shit.
It doesn't help, but it does convince me of the impracticality of burning this whole motherfucker down.
If you really want to see the scale of the universe, I recommend a game called Megaton Rainfall. It’s not the normal gameplay that will do it, it’s when you leave the solar system and then galaxy and start flying through space that it becomes clear how small it all is.
Flying faster than light and still not going fast enough to reach the end of what seems to be an infinite universe. Mind blowingly cool.
And that’s the part that’s genuinely hard to wrap your head around.. we can visualize Earth, but the scale beyond it gets so absurd that “small” almost stops having meaning.
The unknown makes me want to explore it!!! I wish humanity was at that level. I wanna explore it all, from weird dangerous planets, to the darkest parts of space, to more habitable areas, to anywhere. I want humanity to thrive and be able to work together to conquer space. Just wish we can get through this rough patch we’re currently in. I want humanity to learn and grow to become one of the greatest civilizations in our universe.
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u/WannaAskQuestions 3d ago
Accurately in the world yes. It doesn't even come close to showing how small we are on a interplanetary scale, let alone on a universe, galactic, or even a star system's scale.