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How Big is the Universe

I think this is the required response:

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy



Aaaand... I posted based on the thread title without reading the link first. Sorry.
 
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Barringer Meteor Crater is now "Chixculub" crater?

Oooooh www. reasonablefaith. org/the-end-of-the-world
Nice source there.
 
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This will make you groan if you are well-versed in such questions as "How big is the universe?", but...I have always thought the size of the universe is irrelevant. How big is it to us? If the universe is all that is, we might be able to come to some understanding of how vast it is. If it isn't, well...:confused:
 
It's this big.
If you got in a rickshaw1 and the guy pedalled 2really hard for twenty seconds 3, you would still be in the car park.

1. Substitute any form of transport you like.
2. Substitute any drive system you can imagine.
3.Substitute the longest time you can think of.
 
Space is incomprehensibly huge. Even the distance to the moon is mind-boggling. I personally can't grasp the size of space quite frankly - it's too large to compare anything to it.
 
Steve said:
I think this is the required response:

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy



Aaaand... I posted based on the thread title without reading the link first. Sorry.
Click to expand...


Doesn't matter. The quote still fits with the title of the thread. And it's the first thing I thought of as well. :)
 
elkabong51 said:
This will make you groan if you are well-versed in such questions as "How big is the universe?", but...I have always thought the size of the universe is irrelevant. How big is it to us? If the universe is all that is, we might be able to come to some understanding of how vast it is. If it isn't, well...:confused:
Click to expand...

I got into an argument with someone about that at one point. I argued that after a certain point, we can say that a number is not practically different than infinity. For example, if space is finite but so large that human beings will never explore it all (and I'm talking about things like "finding new galaxies" and the like, not "I haven't seen behind my fridge") it doesn't matter, for an practical purpose, whether the universe is infinite or not. We'll be doing the same thing either way.

There are scientific reasons to want to know how big the universe is, but from a practical perspective it's not distinguishable from infinite in size right now.

The photo of the Chixulub Crater made me sad. There are really good pictures of the real crater. If you can't get something that simple right, what are the odds you get the really weird stuff right?
 
Wait they're calling Barringer crater Chicxulub??????????
This was interesting till then
 
Steve001 said:
Here's a little paper comparing how big things are, from the practical to the speculative size of the universe.
https://sites.google.com/site/largenumbers/home/2-1/surveying_the_cosmos
Click to expand...

That article needs some proofreading. Not only for spelling and grammar errors, which are abundant, but for serious conceptual problems.

The opening example of the average motorcycle being one meter long was conceived by someone who either doesn't know what a motorcycle is or doesn't know what a meter is.

Some of the later examples of cosmology theories are not exactly mainstream.

Who is the target audience for this?
 
I've sent him a message about the crater picture. Also about "your" and "you're," and the use of "x times taller than" versus "x times the height of."

Edit to add: About the motorcycle, all I can figure is that it's a kid's motorcycle, thus smaller. Can anyone ID the make and model?

Fred
 
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HighRiser said:
That article needs some proofreading. Not only for spelling and grammar errors, which are abundant, but for serious conceptual problems.

The opening example of the average motorcycle being one meter long was conceived by someone who either doesn't know what a motorcycle is or doesn't know what a meter is.

Some of the later examples of cosmology theories are not exactly mainstream.

Who is the target audience for this?
Click to expand...

Let's not take this article too seriously. I posted it just for the imaginative nature of it.
 
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