Size of the universe: Difference between revisions
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The size of the universe refers to the relative size of the universe and entities contained within it. The universe is vast; it's been expanding for almost 13.8 billion years, at a considerable fraction of the speed of light,[1] so it's roughly 13 billion light years across. This means that the universe is ~1.3 x 1026 m across. People are usually not quite 2 m tall, atoms are about 10-10 m across, nuclei are about 10-15 m across. While mathematics says there's a difference of a factor 1041, and that could be written out: 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000x, it's hard to wrap one's mind around numbers like this.
There are some very good on-line tools to help compare the sizes of various objects in the universe:
- The King Centre for visualization in science[2], specifically their scale of the cosmos
- The htwins project (click on the start button and then click on the notes to mute the music)
- Hyperphysics has a nice analogy here that helps scale the size of the universe.
Here's a video from IMAX cosmic voyage (music from "The Matrix" movie-trilogy and "Awake" by Jake Kaufman):
Please contact us with other tools showing the size of the universe in cool and interesting ways.
References
- ↑ For some interesting reading please see: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_expansion.html
- ↑ http://www.kcvs.ca/site/projects/astronomy.html