A NASA artist\u2019s conception of what our galaxy, the Milky Way, would look like if viewed from outside and \u201cabove\u201d it \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0(Public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
From Richard Panek, The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality<\/em>, 28:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSaying that all the billions of stars we see are part of our galaxy and that billions of galaxies lie beyond our own doesn\u2019t do justice to the scale of the universe. \u00a0Just as our eyes didn\u2019t need to evolve to see radio waves in order for us to survive, maybe our minds didn\u2019t need to evolve to understand the numbers that astronomers were now trying to incorporate into their thinking. \u00a0Like cultures that count \u2018One, two, three, more,\u2019 we tend to regard the scale of the universe \u2014 to the extent that we regard it at all \u2014 as \u2018Earth, planets, Sun, far.'\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
To help us picture the magnitudes, Panek uses the \u201cone Mississippi\u201d method of counting. \u00a0(If you say \u201cone Mississippi,\u201d \u201ctwo Mississippi,\u201d and so forth, you\u2019re giving each number approximately a second.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the \u201cone Mississippi\u201d rate, it would take you 11 days, 13 hours, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds to count to a million.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
To count to one billion \u2014 that\u2019s a thousand millions \u2014 it would, obviously, take you a thousand times as long as counting to a million. \u00a0That is, it would require 31 years and 8.5 months.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
To reach a trillion, you would be obliged to count one thousand times to a billion \u2014 which would occupy about 32,000 years of your life.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
(Try not to think, in this context, of the federal government deficit in Gree . . . er, in the United States, which, by the end of this year, will reach roughly $23 trillion. \u00a0If you simply counted those dollars individually, taking a second for each, doing so would require approximately 600,000 years. \u00a0No, let\u2019s stick with Richard Panek and astronomy. \u00a0Much less depressing.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
A light-year \u2014 the distance that light travels in twelve earthly months \u2014 comes to about six trillion miles. \u00a0To count that high would take you 6 x 31,000 or 186,000 years.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
(Sorry. \u00a0I can\u2019t resist pointing out that it would take you far less time to count the miles in a light-year than to count the number of dollars in the federal debt. \u00a0But back to the much\u00a0more humble\u00a0figures involved in astronomy.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Sun is 93 million miles from Earth. \u00a0Otherwise, the nearest star is 4.3 light-years, or 25 trillion miles. \u00a0(If you would like to count those miles, block out 800,000 years in your calendar. \u00a0Maybe you can get to it next weekend.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, from the edge of one of its spirals over to the edge of the one opposite, is about 100,000 light-years in diameter. \u00a0That would take you eighteen billion years of counting. \u00a0You\u2019ll probably need to wait until retirement before tackling that number, of course, and then you face the fact that there are estimated to be at least 100,000,000,000 \u2014 one hundred billion \u2014 galaxies in the observable universe.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In other words, the thing is pretty big.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 From Richard Panek, The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, 28: \u00a0 \u201cSaying that all the billions of stars we see are part of our galaxy and that billions of galaxies lie beyond our own doesn\u2019t do justice to the scale of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>