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Re:Why Understanding Space Is So Hard by CPLX on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @03:38PM (#10983085)
Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
Re:Why Understanding Space Is So Hard by danbruc on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @07:04PM (#10984661)
52! is the number of different ways you can arrange a single deck of cards. Let's try to wrap our puny human brains around the magnitude of this number with a fun little theoretical exercise. Start a timer that will count down the number of seconds from 52! to 0. We're going to see how much fun we can have before the timer counts down all the way.

Start by picking your favorite spot on the equator. You're going to walk around the world along the equator, but take a very leisurely pace of one step every billion years. Make sure to pack a deck of playing cards, so you can get in a few trillion hands of solitaire between steps.

After you complete your round the world trip, remove one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean. Now do the same thing again: walk around the world at one billion years per step, removing one drop of water from the Pacific Ocean each time you circle the globe. Continue until the ocean is empty.

When it is, take one sheet of paper and place it flat on the ground. Now, fill the ocean back up and start the entire process all over again, adding a sheet of paper to the stack each time you’ve emptied the ocean. Do this until the stack of paper reaches from the Earth to the Sun.

Take a glance at the timer, you will see that the three left-most digits haven’t even changed. You still have 8.063 × 10⁶⁷ more seconds to go. So, take the stack of papers down and do it all over again. One thousand times more. Unfortunately, that still won’t do it. There are still more than 5.385 × 10⁶⁷ seconds remaining. You’re just about a third of the way done. [1]

Well, the volume of the visible universe is 3.4 × 10⁸⁰ m³ and therefore another factor of 4.2 trillion larger than 52!. And then the entire universe is estimated to be at least another 150 or 250 times larger than the visible universe. In diameter, not volume.

[1] http://czep.net/weblog/52cards.html

Re:Why Understanding Space Is So Hard by scoj on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @08:09PM (#10985188)
Wow. Thank you for sharing this. Amazing to try and wrap your head around this.
Re:Why Understanding Space Is So Hard by ice303 on Thursday January 28, 2016 @05:59AM (#10987491)
Awesome explanation. Thank you for sharing
Re:Why Understanding Space Is So Hard by meric on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @07:41PM (#10984932)
If one wants to get a sense of how far things are, it's probably more helpful to imagine all bodies besides the moon as being infinitely far away.

At 4km per hour, it takes 11 years of continuous walking to walk the distance between Earth and the Moon; 4252 years to the Sun; 214041 years to Pluto; 1.17 billion years to Alpha Centauri.

Assuming single celled organisms travel very slowly, that means if you have been walking your entire lifetime to Alpha Centauri, and your parents did the same and gave birth to you on their way to Alpha Centauri, and their parents gave birth to them on their way to Alpha Centauri, ancestors all the way back to the first biotic life form, you'd be just about arriving, now.

It does also mean, the sum of all distance traveled by all lifeforms on Earth is longer than the distance between Earth to Alpha Centauri and back by quite a few times, that can likely be measured in the billions.

Re:Why Understanding Space Is So Hard by charlieflowers on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @06:23PM (#10984419)
You are here.