If you’ve been on the internet for the past few days, you’ve probably seen this image. It is a whole new image of a tiny part of the observable universe, equal to a “grain of sand held at arm’s length”. Each of these tiny little things is its own GALAXY.
There are THOUSANDS of galaxies in this image. THOUSANDS in this “little grain of sand”.
Space Telescope Science Institute / NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team
1.But let’s back up for a second. It’s Earth! This is where we live.
2.And that’s where you live in your neighborhood, the solar system!
3.This is the distance, to scale, between the Earth and the Moon. Doesn’t look too far, does it?
4. THINK YOURSELF. Within this distance, you can fit every planet in our solar system, nicely and neatly.
5.But let’s talk about the planets. This little green spot is North America on Jupiter.
6.And here is the size of the Earth (well, six Earths) compared to Saturn:
seven.While I have you here, here’s how many Earths can fit on the diameter of Jupiter:
8.And just for good measure, remember the adorable little Pluto? We know what it looks like now!
9.We even have images of the surface of Pluto:
ten. But that’s nothing compared to our sun. Remember that you live on one of these LITTLE visible points to the right of the sun:
11. And you see that little black dot next to the sun? It’s Mercury:
12.But let’s talk about the Earth. Here is the Earth seen from the moon:
13.Here is the Earth seen from Mars:
14.This is Mars from Earth:
15.Here is the Earth just behind the rings of Saturn:
16.And here is the Earth just beyond Neptune, 4 billion kilometers away.
To paraphrase the great man Carl Sagan, everyone and everything you’ve ever known exists on this little dot.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
17.Let’s take a step back. Here is the size of the Earth compared to the size of our sun. Terrifying, right?
18.Here is this same sun from the surface of Mars:
19. And here is the size of a black hole compared to our solar system:
20.But it’s nothing. Again, as Carl once thought, there are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth:
21. Which means there are many, many bigger ones than our puny little sun. Look at how tiny and insignificant our sun is compared to VY Canis Majoris, one of the largest stars we know:
Our sun is probably having his lunch money stolen.
22.Here’s another look. The largest star we have observed, VY Canis Majoris, is 1,000,000,000 times larger than our sun:
23.But none of this compares to the size of a galaxy. In fact, if you scaled the sun to the size of a white blood cell and scaled the Milky Way galaxy using the same scale, the Milky Way would be the size of the United States:
24.This is because the Milky Way galaxy is huge. This is where you live inside:
By the way, the Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across:
25.But even our galaxy is a bit of a miss compared to others. Here is the Milky Way compared to IC 1011, 350 million light-years from Earth:
Just THINK of everything that might be inside.
jwinman.com
26.But think bigger. Here is another image with thousands and thousands of galaxies. This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, contains millions of stars, each with its own planet.
27.This is one of the galaxies pictured, UDF 423. This galaxy is 10 BILLION light years away. When you look at this picture, you are looking billions of years in the past.
Some of the other galaxies are believed to have formed only a few hundred million years AFTER the Big Bang.
NASA / Via wikisky.org
28.And keep that in mind – this is a picture of a very small part of the universe. It’s just an insignificant fraction of the night sky.
This is just for demonstration purposes, not an actual zoomed shot.
Getty
So just remember…
It’s your house.
29.This is what happens when you zoom out from your home to your solar system.
30.And that’s what happens when you zoom out further…
31.And further…
32.Keep on going…
33.Just a little further…
34.Almost there…
35.And here it is. Here is everything in the observable universe, and here is your place in it. Just a tiny little ant in a giant jar.
#Images #Stop #Literally #Reevaluate #Decision #Youve #Life
