Monday, July 04, 2005

How big is BIG???

Did you know that the size of our universe is about 15 billion light years?? If some of you don’t know what a light year is, it is the time taken for light to travel in a year. If you have no clue how fast light travels, consider this: the distance between Earth and the Sun is 149,597,892 kilometers, which the light covers in about 8 minutes. This means that, in a year, light travels about 6 trillion miles, which again means, 6 trillion x 15 billion = size of the universe. The speed of light is about 186,000 miles per second.

15 billion light years is what we humans have managed to see, ie, we have light source that is believed to be from 15 B light years away, the size could be bigger but we are only not capable of seeing it with our existing technology.
In our solar system, the Sun accounts for 99.87% of the mass while the planets together comprise a meager 0.05% and all the satellites and meteors and other space debris accounts for the rest.

Galaxies are enormous swarms of stars, dust, gas, and dark matter held together by gravity. The sun is one of about 100 billion stars in our own galaxy, called the Milky Way. If you think that’s incredible, imagine this: The Milky Way is just one of billions in the observable universe!
Most galaxies are found in clusters of about 150 galaxies, bound together by each other’s gravity. Our Milky Way is part of a small cluster of some 30 galaxies called the Local Group. Clusters of galaxies are often collected in superclusters. Our Local Group is part of the Virgo Supercluster, which contains several thousand galaxies
Galaxies range in size, containing anywhere from 100,000 to 3 trillion stars!

Phew!!! What in the world am I?

Cultural Creative

81%

Modernist

69%

Materialist

69%

Romanticist

63%

Postmodernist

56%

Idealist

50%

Existentialist

50%

Fundamentalist

38%

What is Your World View? (updated)
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