5 Amazing Space Facts And Pictures

This question originally appeared on Quora. Answer by Joab Hodge.

We are tiny.

Very tiny. But we look in the sky, and wonder, “Man oh man, if I ever tried walking around the Earth once, it’d take me a lifetime.”

Well, you aren’t wrong. The surface area of Earth is HUGE, but hold on, if we see the world as big, then what must this look like to us?

Yes, my friends, that small little blue planet is us, compared to our relatively far neighbor, Jupiter. That big Hunk is over 122 times larger than us. Crazy right? We could NEVER walk around that planet.

Let’s step it up a bit, how about Mr. Sun?

That dot is again, us. HOLY COW! That is massive. The sun is a whopping 1,300,000 times bigger than our little blue planet. Wanna get bigger?

Wait, there’s bigger?!

Yes.

Meet UY Scuti, one of the largest stars currently discovered. Remember when our planet was a dot next to the sun? Well, now the Sun is merely a PIXEL compared to this super-massive giant.

So…. wanna get bigger…?

WHAT?

Aww, look at that wee little thing, isn’t it cute?

No, it’s actually terrifying. This is a Quasar Cluster, actually a depiction of a real cluster formed of 73 Quasars. This beast stretches BILLIONS of light years across. In case you don’t know, a light year is how far light travels in a single year. A light year to us is EXTREMELY and absolutely barbaric in size. Seriously. A light year is SO long. This thing is BILLIONS, I repeat, BILLIONS of light years across. Scientists say this cluster is so massive, it defies the mathematics we use on Earth and claims it as “too simple for the Quasar Cluster”

…..Yep. You guessed it. We’re still growing!

This is just a theory, but scientists are assuming that we might be living in something known as a “Multiverse”, which are multiple universes clustered in giant locations. That Quasar clustered listed above would be MICROSCOPIC compared to these giant clusters.

Guess what…? We aren’t done.

Theories support hints of gamma-radiation being left over from the big bang, traveling between these multiverses, and no technology predicted, could ever reach or see such a MASSIVE scale. If we kept zooming out, we’d reach small white and black clusters that look like germs on a Petri-dish, known as….. Outer space.

Outer space expands faster than LIGHT speed. It is never ending, never stopping, and we can NEVER catch up to the unknown void and darkness that is space. It’s absolutely insane to think that Earth is massive, and it is, to us, but compared to other things, we are insignificant… and it keeps growing.

We are tiny.