One of the most amazing things that the human mind is able to do is to contemplate the Universe. Now, few of us are really able to visualize it accurately. (Maybe concepts of accuracy just break down when we’re talking about something as vast as the universe.)

It bothers me to realize that not everyone thinks about the size of the universe. I think it’s important to get a sense of scale, a sense of vastness- how big is big? How far is “out there”?

Personally, I feel that this ought to be a part of every human’s education.

• Earth is 8 light-minutes from the Sun.
• Pluto is 5.5 light-hours away.
• Alpha Centuri A, the nearest star to our solar system, is over 4 light-years away.
• Gliese 581g- the nearest extra-solar planet we’ve discovered that might potentially harbour water, and life, is 22 light-years away.
• Kepler-22b is another one, and it’s 600 light-years away. We haven’t really been searching very much, and it’s possible that we might find others even nearer.
• All of these planets are in solar systems within our galaxy, The Milky Way, which is 100,000 light years across.
• The Milky Way contains 200 to 400 billion stars. If humans ruled the galaxy (what a joke), that’s about 28 to 57 stars per person. If we split the stars down to nations equally (what a joke), that’s 1 to 2 billion stars per country.
• We don’t know nearly as much as we would like to, about all of these things.

I think all of that is really important.

Sometimes thinking about this can lead to existential crises and make us feel small and unimportant. And I think the vastness of the universe does serve to humble us. But it’s also important to remember that we are a part of the Universe. We shouldn’t just focus on how big the actual universe is, but how much of a universe there is inside each and everyone of us- both literally and figuratively.

We are a part of the universe, so the fact that we are able to conceive (vaguely) of the universe means that the universe is conceiving itself, through us. Neil Degrasse Tyson says it better than I ever can:

Live well.