You think you are special to all this? Ok......

[Jackie]

[LadyForCamus]

And sky-daddy picked earth as his special little microscopic snowflake!!! [emoji12].

Amazing and beautiful, thanks for sharing.

[Living in Death]

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.

[Ravenshire]

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.

[Living in Death]

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.

[Jackie]

[Alex K]

It does not appear very sensible to me to describe the observable universe as having 13.8 billion lightyears radius. The furthest things we now see are now what, 50 billion lightyears away? I don't understand where the 13.8 would even come into play as a distance, but I am happy to be told

[abaris]

Preaching to the choir won't convince anyone going la, la, la, I can't hear you.

They simply will go on ignoring the obvious.

[Alex K]

Preaching to the choir won't convince anyone going la, la, la, I can't hear you.

They simply will go on ignoring the obvious.

Hey, I don't care how big YOUR observable universe is, but I'm at the center of mine -> special snowflake

[Jackie]

I know this isn't a poetry thread but the following poem, hosted at my home thread link listed in my sig, was inspired by a link a FB friend Kristin posted, the link in the OP. I think it is relevant to the topic.

 Beam Me Up Scuti, By Brian37 (AKA Brian James Rational Poet on FB and @Brianrrs37 on twitter)

 
Residing in
A constilation 
Given the name
That of Scutum 
 
The moon looks at Earth
"You're bigger than me"
Jupiter responds
"That's nothing you see"
 
Our sun looks at Jupiter
"Who do you think you are"
Canis Majoris responds
"I'm bigger by far"
 
UY Scuti
A hyper Red Giant
Looks at the puny
In utter defiance 
 
1, 708 Solar Radii
1.5 billion miles
In diameter 
Makes our sun cry
 
5 billion times
The mass of the sun
If swapped out 
"Jupiter you're done"
 
Billions of stars
In our galaxy alone
Hundreds of billions
In our universe known
 
And old fantasms 
Pester us still
Morbid tribalism
Excuses to kill
 
Scuti cares not
Nor Canis Majoris
About our outpost
This speck of dust