How BIG is Big?
Lately, my meditations have pondered over the question of size! After reading about the very small and the Covid-19 virus. Which has an overall diameter is about 0.3 microns or slightly less. That’s about 1/100th the diameter of the average human hair.
I wonder how “Big is Big”?
I came across a nice description of the size of our solar system, below.
“Travel Times by Spacecraft Around the Solar System’ from https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov.
The International Space Station orbits our Earth at the speed of 28,000 Kilometers per hour, by contrast, I drive my car at 100 kilometers per hour. How long would it take to reach the planets within our solar system?
Starting from the sun, as we sit comfortably in the space station, it would take 9.4 days to reach the planet Mercury, the nearest
.
Much later we would reach Venus 17.8 days later.
We would reach our home planet Earth 24.5 days later,
Red Mars would come into sight 37.5 days since we left the sun.
To approach the first of the giant Gas planets – Jupiter it would have taken 128.5 days of travel.
Saturn at 1,437 million km would take 236.7 days.
Uranus at 2,871 million Km it would take – 1,3 years to reach.
Neptune at 4,530 million km would be 2.0 years later, after leaving the sun.
To explore our Milky Way Galaxy we would need to measure distances as the speed that light travels.
Light will travel 1,079,252,849 km per hour, and in one year it will have traveled 9.46 trillion kilometers.
To reach the nearest star Proxima Centauri, it would take light 4.24 Light-Years to get there.
To cross the diameter of the Milky Way would take a 100,000 light-years journey.
For our solar system to make one cycle around the Milkyway Galaxy it would take 226 Million years.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have captured the most comprehensive picture ever assembled of the evolving Universe — and one of the most colourful. The study is called the Ultraviolet Coverage of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UVUDF) project. Yet, the Milky Way is but one of billions of universes out there!
Each spect in another Galaxy. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field seen in ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and Z. Levay (STScI)
