I friend of mine sent me a link to this YouTube video recently, his intent I’m sure was for me to marvel at how large some of the entities in our universe are. What happened, is that I realized without any hesitation something else: how small we are.
Most of us have a pretty good idea how much larger Jupiter and the other Gas Giants are than our humble little blue globe. But seeing how much larger the Sun is in comparison to our world can come as something of a surprise to people, particularly those who haven’t studied much astronomy. Sure we all know that the sun is a very long distance from us, and that on average it takes its light a full 8 minutes to reach us… but the scale is still incredible.
So how then do we react when we find out that the largest known star in our galaxy is proportionally larger to our sun than our sun is to Pluto? Watch the movie. Be amazed. Feel small.
2 responses so far ↓
1 trev // Oct 26, 2006 at 10:57 am
Yeah. That’s physical size. Now think about temporal. If the history of the planet earth were drawn as a line from LA to New York, the span of one human lifetime would encompass less than 12 inches. I think it was around 7 or 8. Minuscule, non?
2 Keith // Oct 26, 2006 at 11:49 pm
Tres minuscule.
Imagine comparing it to the history of the universe drawn on the same scale…
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