MAY 24, 2018

A lesson on existentialism

WRITTEN BY: Kathryn DeMuth Sullivan

Think the world revolves around you? The images in this video about outer space will make you think again. Some of these you just have to see yourself in order to fully get the magnitude of what we're talking about, but here are some numbers to back up the images:

1. The Sun, our star, may seem elephantine to us, but as far as stars out there go, it's not much to write home about. Arcturus is 16,000 times larger in volume than the Sun. Alpha Scorpii A. is 690 million times larger in volume. VY Canis Majoris is 2.9 billion times larger in volume. Get the picture?

2. In terms of diameter, the Sun is 1,400,000 km wide. Sound big? The Milky Way galaxy is 950,000,000,000,000,000 km wide. And still the Milky Way is a relatively small galaxy!

3. In each galaxy exists billions of stars, each with their own entire solar systems. There are over thousands of galaxies just in one tiny corner of the universe!

The rest you've got to watch the video to really soak it in. Go, watch it, it'll blow your mind!