(February 22, 2016 at 9:51 pm)The Gentleman Bastard Wrote:(February 22, 2016 at 9:37 pm)Living in Death Wrote: The Universe is something like 38.6 billion light years, end to end (according to background microwave radiation; could be larger). For light to travel from the sun to our planet takes around eight minutes. That's 1 AU. I believe Pluto is something like 9.6 AU out. It would take us our entire lives to reach something so far out if we were to travel by spacecraft. Now, that's out to the Kuiper belt. How long to the Oort cloud or to the next system?
So if we were to do a little bit of fundamental (no, not that type of fundamental :p) mathematics, that's just under eighty light minutes from the Sun to the outer limits of our system, about 70ish if we were mapping from Earth. Our entire lives to travel several light minutes, and our universe is 38.6 billion light years in length.
Really makes you think.
Well, you're off by a little seeing as there a people who were born before our first interstellar craft was launched (one of the voyagers, don't remember which) and they're middle aged now.
Still, the point you're trying to convey stands. The visible universe (13.8 billion LY in every direction) really is too big for our minds to comprehend.
The really freaky part is that no one really knows how big the universe really is. 50 billion lightyears? 100 billion lightyears? 1000 billion lightyears? A billion, billion? Infinite? I'd be thrilled if we could developed affordable interplanetary travel.
Yes, I was going to point out I could easily be off by some magnitude. Thanks for the correction.
