Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Awe of Scale

The world is a big place.

But on a larger scale its a relatively small planet orbiting a star.
In our galaxy there are 300 billion other stars:
300,000,000,000 stars
That's just our galaxy. In the observable universe there are 100 billion galaxies:
100,000,000,000 galaxies
Galaxies vary in size, but the estimated total number of stars in the observable universe is 70 billion trillion stars:
70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars

Now you feel small, so let's fix that.

Your body consists of 30 trillion cells:
30,000,000,000,000 cells
Each little cell contains 100 trillion atoms:
100,000,000,000,000 atoms

We can count the zeros, but these vast scales are beyond the grasp of our imagination.  It fills me with a sense of awe to try and comprehend this.

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