The DEPTH of our Solar System

[Devilbod]

Ah Zak, I got a cheap telescope about £75 about a year ago, can only see the moon with it but boy does it mess with your mind then.
You can see loads of details and you suddenly realise how big it really is and how fast it all moves, you aim the telescope at the moon for gods sake and with in 20sec it's gone, really worth doing though.
Deffinatly want to get a bigger one a little later on to look at Mars Moons and more stuff, of course the dream is to get one that can look at nebula's and that tracks the movement by using you PC!

[khaine]

Just to boggle ur mind even further, im pretty sure that Rythmic's sums were slightly off,
by my maths the galaxy is 65 billion times longer than the distance from the earth and the Sun (not 6.5 billion)

Aslo here the really big one - by my maths (based on Rythmic's figures) the universe has an estimated (thats we can see) 1.5*(10^24), which for those of u that dont like standaard maths notation - thats about 15000000000000000000000000, or 1.5 trillion trillion.......

now thats crazy (and the reason why i believe thats there are other 'sentient' races out there)

[Rave]

I'd say it's pretty much a certainty that there's other life in the universe.....and it's also pretty much a certainty that we'll never make contact with them.

Rich :¬)

[StarkMjolk]

Just to add more crazy numbers, if I remember correctly, we believe there is about 10^79 (or was it 78?) atoms in the universe. That is quite a big number. 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 atoms... even though an atom is smal, that is a BIG number... just think about it.

We are really tiny in the universe

[Swafe]

lets see how far this rabbit hole goes.....



ah my head hurts

[TiG]

Heh thats why scientists don't blooming go through all these nasty units, They like dealing with smaller units, it makes the maths easy and stops their heads hurting so much

1 Light year is a damn big distance too, why you think they use light year as a measurement, because it reduces the 0's by a good 15 odd hehe

What you've got to realise is that learning about our universe rocks, trying to understand what was put before us. I just hope we don't kill ourselves here on earth before we truely get a chance to investigate the solar system then the universe

TiG

[Auran]

I always liked MegaParsecs;

3.26 x 10^6 Lightyears, now thats a big distance

[TiG]

Yep when we talk about these sort of distances, we either need to find a way to go faster than light or cut through space to shorten the distance, otherwise even at light speed thats going to have to be a colony ship that survives longer than human civilisation has heh...

TiG

[Paul Adams]

On a sort-of related note, is the universe trumpet-shaped?

Interesting theory that the tube is infinitely long, but so narrow that it has a finite volume...

[Auran]

And even if we do sort it all out and colonise other planets - will they remain human?

Our current form has been influenced by our own planet. What happens when we build civilisations on others, unless we get really big for our own boots and start terraforming everything to resemble Earth