How Immense is Space?
By erinjcarney
@erinjcarney (7)
United States
June 24, 2012 2:22am CST
Hey all,
I have often wondered just how immense space is. I personally do not think that the human mind can understand how majestically huge space is. Just think for a minute. Our own Milky Way Galaxy is over 100,000 light years across.
There are 80-100 Billion galaxies just in the observable universe. (The parts we can see)Now just imagine only 1 Million galaxies. Can you wrap your mind around that large of a number of planets, stars, etc? And that is only 1 Million.
This keeps me awake at night. But there is more.
Lets say that somehow you could travel as fast as you wanted, and could reach the edge of the universe. What would be there? Would there be a brick wall? If so, then what would you find if you could break through this brick wall?
Just think on that, and you tell me that we are special.
Garrett
5 responses
@McCreeper (777)
• United States
24 Jun 12
I don't think it would be possible to break that brick wall, not yet at least. Space is inevitably getting larger as we speak and I don't think the current generation will be able to figure out how to fix that. Thinking about Space makes me feel small, but thinking about space yet again makes me believe space is inevitably going back to the drawing board.
It's sometimes the little things that count. Hope this insight helps.
@Graptopetalum (1807)
• Canada
25 Jun 12
Have you seen Monty Python's Meaning of Life? There's a song in it about huge the universe is.
There's an episode of Futurama where they go to the edge of the universe and see their counterparts from another universe looking back.
Is there a wall or do things just fizzle out? Not only is the universe expanding but the speed of the expansion is getting faster because of dark energy, which is kind of like anti-gravity that works over very large distances. Dark energy is thought to make up most the mass of the universe. Dark matter makes up most the rest. Therefore most the stuff the universe is made of is invisible and mysterious. I've seen a couple of talks (one of them a TED talk) which basically concluded that we don't know most things.
@PageTurner (2825)
• United States
25 Jun 12
Hello erinjcarny and welcome to the myLot :)
If you stretched out your arms as wide as possible, and your hands at the end of your arms, and the fingers at the end of the hands. If you stretched out as far as possible, space is bigger than that space between your outstretched fingers.
Think about all that space.
Peace.
I love the Universe!! 
@Octoberatom (4)
• United States
25 Jun 12
There are also other things to consider when thinking about these questions. When we think of space, we tend to think of space in three dimensions. Even though we can't perceive it, there can be a 4th dimension or a 5th dimension, 6th, 7th,..., unlimited number of dimensions. There is also the thought of parallel universes...What happens in all those universes? In short, no we cannot wrap our minds around that large of a number of planets, stars, etc.
