How Big is the UNIVERSE?

The Universe is way Bigger than we can imagine

 Md. Rakibur Rahman Shovon
The Milky Way galaxy. (source)

The Universe is an awe-inspiring place. It includes every aspect of reality, from the smallest subatomic particles to the greatest objects that mankind can or cannot see. The curiosity to know more about the Universe has been there since the early stages of civilization. And while we may never fully understand its true scale, we can still try to comprehend just how big the universe really is. 

To start with, let us begin with our closest cosmic structure, the Moon. Whether captivating some of the greatest minds of human history or illuminating the night sky, the moon 
The Moon (Credit: Getty images)
has been the closest cosmic structure since 4.53 billion years ago. Though said to be the closest but the distance between the moon and the earth is on average 3,84,400 km. You could fit 30 entire earth in between this distance. The closest star to our planet and also our source of energy is the Sun. This massive cosmic body is so far away from us that it takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds for light(3,00,000 km per sec) to travel from the sun to earth. The distance is approximately 150 million kilometres. This is called AU or Astronomical Unit.

If we zoom out a bit further, we can find the Voyager 1 space probe, which is the furthest man-made object. According to NASA's mission status, it is currently located 159 AU away from earth. At some point of its long voyage, Voyager 1 turned its camera around at took the famous photo "The Pale blue dot".

Voyager 1 (source)
"The Pale blue dot" (Credits: NASA/jpl-caltech)






Although it may not seem like much at first, but in my opinion, this is the finest photograph ever captured in the entire history of humanity. Earth is this small pale blue dot in the distance. Every person who has ever lived, every person we know, every possession we have, and everything in the history of our species has always been right here, on a tiny dot amidst this huge cosmos. Here is earth and us. The current speed of Voyager 1 is 17 km/s but even with this speed, it would not be able to break the reach of our solar system in another 30,000 years.

"The Milky Way" from end to end (Credit: NASA)

After we leave the solar system, we reach our neighbourhood in the interstellar nebula. Here, light-year units are used to measure distance (9.461 trillion kilometres). The closest star to our Sun, Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light years away. Meaning, if we can somehow travel with the speed of light we would still need 4.24 earth years to reach there. Further zooming out allows us to glimpse the entire Milky Way Galaxy. The galaxy is 105,000 light-years across and contains between 100-500 billion stars and even more planets. Zooming out even further we arrive at our local group of Galaxy. A collection of 54 different galaxies that Is about 10 million light-years across. When we zoom out even farther, we would find the VIRGO SUPERCLUSTER, which the local group of Galaxy is a tiny segment of. Each dot in the picture corresponds to a galaxy similar to our Milky Way Galaxy. The distance them one side to another is mind-blowing 110 million light-years.

VIRGO SUPERCLUSTER (source)
















Even the enormous VIRGO SUPERCLUSTER, however, is but a small lobe of the colossal LANIAKEA SUPERCLUSTER. 100,000 galaxies are contained within this gigantic structure. From one side to the other, the diameter is about 520 million light-years. 

LANEAKEA SUPERCLUSTER (source)


Yet even from there, we can zoom out to the entire Observable Universe and discover that even the titanic LANIAKEA SUPERCLUSTER is only a little and insignificant fraction of everything. The Observable Universe and it contains everything that we know of. It is home to at least two trillion different and individual galaxies, Together they contain more stars than there are grains of sand in the entire earth. 

Observable Universe (source)

The width of the entire Observable Universe is mind-staggering 93 billion light-years. What is perhaps most astonishing is we have no idea what lies beyond that. To keep in mind, the Observable Universe is all we could currently see. It is absolutely possible that the rest of the universe is vastly larger and more fantastic than we could possibly imagine. We simply do not know what is out there because light from such faraway places has yet to reach earth. Moreover, light from some places may never reach earth. The universe is still expanding and the expansion speed is faster than the speed of light. As such, even if humanity exists for eternity, light from some places in an infinite amount of time would never reach earth. So, as unbelievable as it may sound even the Observable Universe is may but a tiny slice of what is out there. According to the Theory of Cosmic Inflation, at the present day, the whole universe could be 150 sextillions (1021) times larger than the Observable Universe. The universe is so unbelievably vast and we barely know it. However, that also means, there is so much more to discover!



REFERENCE

Wall, M. (2017, January 12). How old is the moon? scientists say they finally know. Space.com.

https://www.space.com/35291-moon-age-pinned-down.html

Mission Status. Jet propulsion laboratory. NASA. https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

Stewart, Suzy. The Virgo Supercluster. The Planets.  https://theplanets.org/superclusters/the-virgo-supercluster/.

Alan H. Guth & Paul J.Steinhardt.(1984). The Inflationary Universe. Scientific American.

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