Friday, August 7, 2020

Quora User Breaks Down Size Of The Universe


Perhaps the most mind blowing fact about the size of the universe is that the universe doesn't have one size, instead it's just that the universe is literal size. It's also wild to think about the fact that we can see the light from a galaxy that existed long before homo sapiens did. Taking a minute to step outside the mental carousel of juggling our daily obligations and life problems, and to stare up at space to appreciate the beautiful insignificance of it all in the grand expanse of the universe, can work wonders for keeping the ego in check. 

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Text - 8:47 4 l LTE What fact about the universe's size blows your mind? Krister Sundelin · Updated July 30 E-learning Producer (2020-present) Q: What fact about the universe's size blows your mind? A: On a dark night with no moon and a clear sky, go out of town and up a mountain. Bring binoculars. They will help. Then find the giant W in the sky. That's Cassiopeia. Below the W is a stick figure of sorts, a giant Spongebob Squarepants. The square is the square of Pegasus, and the legs are Androm

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Text - Aim your binoculars at it. You may see something like this: That smudge is the Andromeda Galaxy. It's a galaxy 2.5 million light-years away, and it is in fact our closest galactic neighbour (if you don't count the satellite galaxies like the Magellanic clouds. That means that the light that you are seeing right now left that galaxy 2.5 million years ago.

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Human - At that time, Homo sapiens did not exist. In fact, Homo habilis, the ancestor of Homo ergaster and our ancestor Homo erectus, had just appeared. And that's our closest neighbour.

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Sky - Let us widen the scope a bit. You can't do it using your binoculars, however. This is the M87 galaxy.

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Text - It's a bit famous these days, because scientists have managed to capture an image of a black hole at its center. They used a radio telescope as big as the Earth to do it: The "virtual telescope" used radio telescopes as far apart as Hawaii and Tenerife, and Greenland and the South Pole. Those signals have been travelling towards us for 55 million years. The light and radio signals we are seeing now left M87 a mere 10 million years after the dinosaurs died out, and around 47-50 million yea

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Text - And that's just 55 million light-years away. The light from this little blob has travelled 240 times further than that. This is MACS0647, the farthest known galaxy from Earth. Thanks to the expansion of the universe, it is now a lot further, but its light has been travelling for 13.26 billion years. It may be one of the first galaxies in the universe, three times older than Earth. 55.5K views · View Upvoters · View Sharers · Answer requested by Bixin Shui 4 1.3K a 55 O 43 000

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