How big is the universe? Mind-boggling interactive map reveals the sheer scale of objects across the cosmos

  • This interactive map lets you explore the true scale of the observable universe
  • Our Sun is only one of 70 septillions stars spread out through the cosmos 



Sometimes even being in a big city can be enough to make you feel small.

But looking up into the empty vastness of space, the sheer size of the universe is almost impossible to comprehend. 

This incredible interactive graphic lets you explore the sheer scale of our universe, and get some appreciation for our small place within it. 

As we zoom out from our human perspective we see that the city that once seemed so overwhelming is only a tiny smudge on an insignificant rock amidst billions of others like it.

And, at the scale of the Universe, we can see that the number of stars like our own is greater than all the grains of sand on Earth. 

This amazing interactive map lets you explore the true scale of the universe by zooming in and out from the scale of a human right out to the edges of the observable universe
Even at the scale of Earth objects, humans look minute. Compared to the Great Pyramid of Giza, which are 150 metres tall, humans are barely visible
Our Universe in numbers 

10 million superclusters 

  • There are more superclusters in the universe than there are people living in London and Birmingham combined

2 trillion galaxies 

  • At its maximum flow 100,000 cubic feet of water flows over Niagra Falls every second. If every galaxy were shrunk down to one foot they would take 115 days to all flow over the falls.

40 quintillion black holes

  • If every black hole in the Universe were shrunk down to the size of a single human hair and stacked up, the resulting would still be 0.25 light-years long. 

70 septillion stars

  • There are more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.

10 to the 25th power planets orbiting stars

  • This number is so absurdly big that if every planet in the Universe were a carbon atom, stretched out in a single line this would stretch from the Sun to Neptune and back more than 50 times.

The interactive map is titled ‘Scale of the Universe’ and was created by computer scientist Cary Huang.

To see just how small we are compared to the world around us, simply scroll out and watch as familiar landmarks vanish into insignificance.

Or, to explore the world at the microscopic scale, zoom in to see everything from bacteria right down to the fundamental particles that make up the universe. 

To move faster, use the slider at the bottom (or side on mobile) to zoom in and out to smaller or larger objects.  

To learn more about any object you see, tap or click on any of the images which will bring up a fact box with extra information. 

You can also keep selecting smaller or larger objects to zoom in and out.  

As we move outwards from the size of a human, it is surprising just how fast we appear to be vanishingly small. 

Even compared to objects on Earth like the Great Pyramid of Giza, humans start to appear tiny.

But as we reach the scale of planets and moons, thinking in terms of human sizes starts to become tricky. 

Professor Rob Crittenden, a cosmologist from the University of Plymouth, is an expert in the formation of the Universe and studies some of the biggest structures possible.

He told MailOnline that even he struggles to wrap his head around the vastness of the Universe.  

He said: ‘Comprehending such massive scales is difficult, and probably depends on the individual.

‘I can work out from a human scale and try to picture larger and larger things; that provides some intuition, but my understanding in the end is mostly mathematical.’

Zooming out further we can see how countries like the USA (bottom right) and continents like Asia (right) fit within the scale of the entire planet
Our Sun might seem vast, but it is not even one of the largest stars. Aldebaran, for example, is 44 times larger than our star
How many stars are out there?

Our Solar System revolves around one star, the Sun.

But, the Sun is only one of between 100 and 400 billion stars in the Milky Way.

This is only one of more than 100 galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster which, itself only one part of even larger structures.

It is estimated that there could be between 100-200 billion and two trillion galaxies in the Universe.

Overall, scientists estimate that there could be around 70 septilion stars in the Universe.

That’s 70 followed by 23 zeros.

But even turning to numbers starts to become baffling quickly, and to see why we only need to think about our solar system. 

The Earth is a ball of rock and water 7,917 miles (2,742 km) in diameter.

While that might sound pretty big, as we zoom out into the solar system it is quickly clear just how small that really is. 

Diagrams of the solar system generally show the planets neatly aligned and fairly close to one another.

But the planets are only shown this way because showing their true distances is impossible in most formats.

Even the moon, which seems so close, is actually 238,855 miles (384,400 km) from Earth – more than 140 times further than the Earth’s diameter. 

The distance of the Earth from the Sun meanwhile is a massive 93 million miles (150 million km).

Neptune, the last planet in the solar system, is an average of 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion km) from the Sun, a distance so vast that light takes four hours to travel it. 

But, keep zooming out and even our solar system starts to feel quite small as we see that our sun is just a tiny part of the Milky Way Galaxy. 

Zooming out further we need to start looking at things in terms of distance travelled by light. For example, Voyager has travelled a little less than one light day from Earth
This diagram attempts to show the true distance between the objects in our solar system. When we zoom out to the Oort Cloud at the edge of the Solar System the inner planets almost vanish
If our sun were the size of a penny the the Milky Way would be 7.5 million miles across, more than 30 times the distance from Earth to the Moon

Where could aliens be hiding? 

Based on what we know from Earth, for a planet to support life it needs to be the right distance from its star to keep some water liquid.

In the Milky Way, NASA estimates that there are 300 million potentially habitable planets by the most conservative estimate.

In the universe at large, it is estimated that there could be as many as ten thousand billion billion. 

Even if there is a very low chance of intelligent life emerging on any of these planets, the staggeringly high numbers make it very likely that at least some intelligent life is out there.

However, the odds of any life emerging at the same time as our civilisation and being close enough to reach us is extremely low.

This difference is often called the Fermi Paradox. 

Professor Crittenden said: ‘Within the Milky Way galaxy, our solar system is some distance from the centre, in an outer arm.’

To measure the Milky Way itself we can no longer use miles and kilometres but must start thinking in terms of light-years.

This is the distance light travels in one Earth year, which is 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers).

The Milky Way itself is 100,000 light-years across, while the Sun is about 25,000 light-years from its centre.  

If it helps your imagination, look at a penny and pretend that our sun is the size of that little coin.

On this scale, the nearest star to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, would be 350 miles away.

The Milky Way, meanwhile, would be more than 7.5 million miles across; that’s more than 30 times the distance from the Earth to the moon. 

But the Sun is only one between 100 and 400 billion stars within the Milky Way.

To try and get a handle on that number, if you stacked up 100 billion dollar bills on Earth the resulting tower would stretch into space 28 times higher than the orbit of the International Space Station.

Zoom out even further still and you will soon find that even our Galaxy starts to look pretty small at the cosmic scale.

Our solar system is only of between 100 and 400 billion in the Milky Way galaxy (middle left). The Milky Way itself is 100,000 light-years in diameter

READ MORE:

 NASA’S James Webb spots ‘impossible’ Milky Way-like galaxy that shouldn’t exist – and it could change our understanding of the universe

Professor Crittenden said: ‘Galaxies either live on their own, in smaller structures known as groups, or in larger associations called galaxy clusters.’

Due to the pull of gravity, structures like galaxies tend to be drawn together into tighter blobs of matter.

The Milky Way is one of about 30 galaxies in the Local Group, a cluster of galaxies spread over about 10 million light-years.

The Local Group includes our largest galactic neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy which is 2.537 million light-years away.

That is so far that the light that is now reaching us from Andromeda started its journey to our eyes more than two million years ago.

This means when we look at Andromeda, we are actually looking back into the distant past. 

The Milky Way is one part of the Local Group (right),  a cluster of galaxies spread over 10 million light-years. But this is only one part of the Virgo Supercluster which is more than 110 million light-years across
This visualisation of the Laniakea filament or supercluster shows the arrangement of more than 100,000 galaxies over hundreds of thousands of light-years. Our own Galaxy is within this superstructure
What galaxies are in our Local Group?

Our local group is a cluster of about 30 galaxies.The four largest are:

  • The Milky Way 
  • The Andromeda Galaxy
  • The Triangulum Galaxy
  • The Large Magellanic Cloud 

The group also contains a number of other dwarf galaxies and star clusters but these are mainly satellites of the main galaxies.

Finally, as we pull out even further, we begin to see the largest structures in the universe revealing themselves.

At this scale, we can see that our local group is just a small neighbourhood on the outskirts of a massive structure called the Virgo Supercluster which is more than 110 million light-years across. 

However, Virgo is just one of about 10 million superclusters in the universe. 

At the cosmic scale, these superclusters clump together alongside individual galaxies to form sheets and walls of matter called filaments.

These are impossibly vast structures, each of which contains hundreds of thousands of galaxies, themselves made up of hundreds of billions of stars; around one of which is orbiting the small rock upon which you are living.

Our own filament, named Laniakea, is more than 500 million light-years across. 

But the Universe is even vaster still.

Professor Crittenden explains that while the Universe is infinitely large there is a finite limit to what we can observe or what astronomers call a ‘horizon’. 

Zooming out all the way on the interactive map brings you to the edge of the observable universe. We can only see as far as light has had time to travel, making the limits of the known universe 46.508 billion light-years across
How big is the Universe?

We don’t actually know how big the Universe is or could be.  

Because the speed of light is limited we can only see as far as light has had time to travel.

This means that the observable Universe has a Horizon.

This Horizon is 46.508 billion light-years across.

All we know is that the Universe is bigger than this, but there are no signs that it is even finite.

He said: ‘The region of the Universe that we can observe is limited to our neighbourhood where light signals could have reached us in the finite age of the Universe.

‘The full Universe must be larger than this horizon, and we haven’t seen any indications that the Universe is finite; all we really know is that it is bigger than the part of it that we can see.’

The most distant thing that we can see is something called the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR).

‘When the Universe was young, it was incredibly hot, and there were all kinds of particles bouncing off each other, moving very quickly,’ Professor Crittenden explains.

As these particles cooled they eventually settled to 2.7 degrees Kelvin and the tiny amounts of radiation it produces gives us the final limit to what we can see.

This means that the observable universe is estimated to be 46.508 billion light-years across. 

At this point, we are now dealing with numbers that are so absurdly large that they cease to lose any real meaning.

This diagram is the biggest map we have showing the distribution of galaxies within the Universe. It gets its unusual shape because the centre of the Milky Way blocks a section of the Universe from Earth
This artist’s impression shows the universe on a logarithmic scale, which means that distances are shown on an exponentially smaller scale as it moves outwards. With this representation, you are able to see the whole universe from our Sun right out to the honeycomb structure of superclusters
The size of the Universe in numbers

Diameter of Earth – 7,917 miles (2,742 km)

Distance from Earth to the Sun – 93 million miles (150 million km)

Diameter of the Solar System (to the Oort Cloud) – 18.6 trillion miles (30 trillion km)

Diameter of the Milky Way – 100,000 light-years

Size of the Local Group of Galaxies – 10 million light-years

Size of the Virgo Supercluster – 110 million light-years

Size of the Observable Universe – 46.508 billion light-years

Having started with the size of a single human being, the universe is on a scale that makes even our own Galaxy fade into nothingness.

But, it is also important to remember that by looking down rather than up, our own planet can seem impossibly vast as well. 

Imagine you are sitting on a beach at night; if you look up into the sky, even on a clear night you may only a few thousand stars; that’s about as many as there are grains of sand in a handful taken from the beach. 

In fact, each cubic meter of sand contains 9 billion grains of sand meaning that there are, very roughly, 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on all the beaches of the world; that’s 75 followed by 17 zeros. 

If you remember, there were only between 100 and 400 billion stars in the Milky Way.

However, the Universe itself is believed to contain an estimated 70 septillion stars, that’s 7 followed by 23 zeros – or 70 thousand million, million, million stars in the observable universe.

But before you start to get lost in the vastness of space, imagine dipping your hand in the sea and letting ten drops fall.

In those ten drops of water alone there were more molecules of water than there are stars in the observable universe. 

Now, if you can handle any more enormity, just know that Earth’s oceans hold 1,233 quintillion litres of water.

Reference

Denial of responsibility! Elite News is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
DMCA compliant image

Leave a comment