The Scale of the Universe

Sorta neat to play with,,,,, http://htwins.net/scale2/

Probably the most jaw dropping figure I heard was the estimate for the amount of suns. It was stated there is as many suns in the universe as there is grains of sand on the beaches of the world.



Voyager one is traveling at about 10 miles per second or 38,000 MPH and was launched in 1977. If we were able to travel at the speed of light which is 186,282 miles per second we could reach the nearest star in a little over 4 years. It's that far away.

The milky way is estimated at 100,000 light years across.

The observable universe is estimated at 93 billion light across.

The numbers are just unimaginable.

Very cool! Really puts things into perspective.

I love this sort of thing! This one is done on size. At the Smithsonian in DC they have a video that is done on distance. It starts on a grain of sand in Florida and backs away, out of the atmosphere, into space, and many many light years away. It makes the Earth seem so insignificant.

I once read that one thing (among others) will keep us from traveling at the speed of light. Acceleration. We humans can only accelerate so fast before it crushes us, so we must accelerate at a rate such that we can still breath, or at least keep out ribs from breaking. If we accelerated at the point where we could just barely breath, it would be hundreds of years before we hit the speed of light. Is this true? Can some physics person do the math? I'd love to know for sure.

I love this sort of stuff also. The concept of a light year is amazing. When you realize how vast the universe is, can you really believe we are the only living things in it? I sure can't. It is the ultimate human arrogance to believe we are it. As far as travel Freddy, you are thinking of physical travel in our regular form. I think we will one day have the technology to travel in a way similar to the "beam me up" method. Not in my life time though. Back around the turn of the 20th century the head of the US Patent office recommended the patent office be done away with as everything that could be invented had already been invented.

Freddy wrote: I once read that one thing (among others) will keep us from traveling at the speed of light. Acceleration. We humans can only accelerate so fast before it crushes us, so we must accelerate at a rate such that we can still breath, or at least keep out ribs from breaking. If we accelerated at the point where we could just barely breath, it would be hundreds of years before we hit the speed of light. Is this true? Can some physics person do the math? I'd love to know for sure.

In space I don't believe that would make a difference becsue there is no gravity. Having said that if 38,000mph is 10mps and lets say it takes a half an to accelerate that fast:

186,000 / 10 = 18,600

18,600 * 30 (min) = 558,000 (min) achieve light speed

9,300 hours to achieve light speed or 387 days. It's probably much shorter that that, half hour to get to 38,000mph is probably way to long.

Acceleration has an effect similar to gravity. It would take about ten years to reach close to the speed of light at 1 g acceleration and another ten years to slow down. Time would also slow down so it would take less than 20 years Earth time.

Freddy wrote:I love this sort of thing! This one is done on size. At the Smithsonian in DC they have a video that is done on distance. It starts on a grain of sand in Florida and backs away, out of the atmosphere, into space, and many many light years away. It makes the Earth seem so insignificant.

I once read that one thing (among others) will keep us from traveling at the speed of light. Acceleration. We humans can only accelerate so fast before it crushes us, so we must accelerate at a rate such that we can still breath, or at least keep out ribs from breaking. If we accelerated at the point where we could just barely breath, it would be hundreds of years before we hit the speed of light. Is this true? Can some physics person do the math? I'd love to know for sure.

Things that have mass can not be accelerated to the speed of light. Only massless wave/particles can play that game.

Mass goes up as speed increases, and this is exponential, so before something with mass hit the speed of light it would be almost infinitely heavy and would requre nearly infinite energy to further accelerate it.

Objects also shrink in length as they approach light speed. You would be an infinitely heavy flat pancake at the speed of light. That would be ugly.

Just think the excitement and fulfillment I had working with some of the top space scientists for 32 years. Yes, I was relatively a bit player, but it was still ground breaking new engineering work for me. I have the utmost respect for the brain power of the space scientists I got to know and work with. Without a doubt I've had a remarkable life and wonder in the universe of things why me?

These universe level space probes take for ever. One was in the proposal stage 20 years ago when I was still working. It was only launched in 2006, 11 years after I retired. Called "Stereo". Dual satellites to make measurement on the universe in 3D. A very clever system design to get a ever changing view of the universe.

See:

http://stereo.jhuapl.edu/

For space buffs it's a good site with lots of science, engineering and mission info. A couple of animations too.

lsayre wrote:Things that have mass can not be accelerated to the speed of light. Only massless wave/particles can play that game.

Wasn't the idea behind the "Warp Field" or "Warp Bubble"? That and while traveling at the speed of light you moved space itself rather that a ship. At least in the Trek world......

186,282 miles per second. Thats 7 trips around the world in one second. And to think the width of our galaxy, The Milky Way, is about 100, 000 light years across. A light year works out to be 5.8 trillion miles. And to further think that the width of our galaxy is merely a spec in the universe among billions of galaxies that we know of. It's huge to say the least. Mankind has a long way to go before achieving a trip even out of our solar system. Our closest neighboring star is just a few light years away and with current technology would take thousands of years to get there.

Richard S. wrote:Probably the most jaw dropping figure I heard was the estimate for the amount of suns. It was stated there is as many suns in the universe as there is grains of sand on the beaches of the world.
.

Carl Sagen.


He also said, "If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space ".

Until 1923 our Milky Way Galaxy was the only game in town. It was the entire universe. Then Edwin Hubble came along and discovered other galaxies and everything changed.

http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/stu/20th_people_hubble.html

lsayre wrote:

Freddy wrote:Objects also shrink in length as they approach light speed.

That could be ugly...

I love to watch the different science shows where they debate and hypothesis if / how we could cover the vast distances in space in an amount of time that makes sense. I am also a believer that we can't be the only life out here. With all the solar systems out there and finding new planets that seem to be in the sweet spot as far as distance from their star and given we have only been here for a split second in universe time I would not be terribly surprised to see a extraterrestrial craft show up sometime. How far advanced could another civilization be that say had a 100000 year head start on us. I would think it sad we are the best that the universe has to offer.

DieselBob wrote:given we have only been here for a split second in universe time I would not be terribly surprised to see a extraterrestrial craft show up sometime.

Thats a stumbling block as well.. Many civilizations could have came into existence and then been annihilated by an outside force or by their own doing before our planet even spawned life. So in regards to discovering other intelligent life - not only are we up against the vast distances, by timing also.

But on the flip side of that, there are so many billions of other places where conditions are right for life to evolve - I would agree that at sometime in the future we will be discovered by ET before we discover him ... Because I think its possible that another civilization is most likely way ahead of us intelligence wise...

There could even be a ruler of the universe that just hasn't ran across us yet..