The Universe How Big Is It Does It End

Namracts Entertainment

#space #trending #cosmos #mystery

Transcript

00:00the universe how big is it picture yourself standing outside on a clear night looking up

00:06at the stars you're standing on earth a rocky ball spinning through space at incredible speeds

00:12this planet holds everything precious to us every laugh every tear every dream that humans have ever

00:19had but earth is just the starting line for an amazing adventure that will stretch our minds

00:25and challenge everything we think we know about size and distance what we're about to discover is

00:31that the universe is so impossibly large that even our biggest numbers start to feel meaningless

00:37we'll travel step by step from our backyard to the very edges of existence itself and along the way

00:44we'll see just how tiny we really are in this cosmic playground first stop our faithful moon let's begin

00:52our journey with our closest neighbor in space the moon sitting roughly 240 000 miles away from us

00:59the moon might seem close but it's actually an incredible distance if you decided to walk to the

01:05moon and could somehow walk on a straight path through space and you walked for eight hours every

01:10single day it would take you about nine years to get there when the apollo astronauts made this journey

01:17in the 1960s and 70s they got to see something no humans had ever seen before earth from far away

01:24from the moon our entire planet looks like a bright blue marble floating in endless black space

01:30all of human history every person you've ever known every place you've ever been

01:34all of it fits on that small beautiful sphere

01:38the blazing heart our sun now let's travel much further out to visit the sun

01:44the star that gives us life the sun sits about 93 million miles away from earth a distance scientists

01:51called one astronomical unit this measurement becomes super important when we start talking

01:56about space distances because everything is so far apart here's a wild fact sunlight takes about

02:03eight minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the sun to your eyes that means when you look at the sun

02:09please don't actually stare at it you're seeing it as it was eight minutes ago not as it is right now

02:15if you could somehow drive your car to the sun at highway speeds the trip would take you over a hundred

02:21years of non-stop driving the sun itself is absolutely massive about 109 times wider than earth

02:29you could fit more than a million earths inside the sun and it would still have room left over

02:34the mysterious red world mars our next destination is mars the red planet that has captured human

02:42imagination for centuries mars orbits the sun at different speeds than earth so sometimes it's

02:48relatively close to us and sometimes it's on the complete opposite side of the sun from us

02:54when mars is closest to earth it's about 35 million miles away when it's furthest that distance jumps to

03:02around 250 million miles the robots we've sent to mars those amazing rovers that drive around taking

03:09pictures and doing experiments had to travel for six to nine months through the cold vacuum of space

03:16typically traveling at 24 600 miles per hour to reach the red planet the frozen giant jupiter and the outer

03:25planets as we continue outward we encounter jupiter the largest planet in our solar system

03:31jupiter is so big that all the other planets could fit inside it with room to spare it sits about

03:39484 million miles from the sun making it more than five times further from the sun than earth is

03:46but jupiter isn't even close to being the most distant planet way out at the edge of our solar system

03:52we find neptune sitting nearly three billion miles from the sun at that distance sunlight takes over four

03:59hours to make the journey if you lived on neptune the sun would look like just another bright star

04:05in the sky humanity's greatest journey the voyager mission in 1977 nasa launched two incredible

04:15spacecraft called voyager 1 and voyager 2. these robotic explorers were designed to visit the outer planets

04:22and then keep going heading out into deep space voyager 1 is now the furthest human-made object from

04:30earth traveling for more than 45 years and covering over 15 billion miles here's something amazing voyager 1

04:39has actually left our solar system entirely it's now traveling through what scientists call interstellar space

04:46the area between the stars even at its incredible distance radio signals from voyager 1 take more

04:54than 22 hours to reach earth traveling at the speed of light in 1990 when voyager 1 was already billions

05:02of miles away scientists turned its camera around to take one last picture of home earth appeared as a

05:09tiny speck of light smaller than a pixel that image reminded us that our entire world with all its beauty

05:16and complexity is just a grain of sand in the cosmic desert beyond our solar system the nearest stars

05:25once we leave our solar system behind distances become almost impossible to imagine the nearest

05:31star to our sun is actually a system of three stars called alpha centauri located about 25 trillion

05:39miles away that distance is so large that astronomers had to invent a new unit of measurement the light

05:46year a light year is the distance light travels in one year which equals about six trillion miles

05:53alpha centauri is 4.3 light years away from us even if we could build a spacecraft that traveled at 10

06:00percent the speed of light which is far beyond anything we can do today it would still take 43 years to

06:06reach our nearest stellar neighbors our island in space the milky way galaxy all the stars you see in the night

06:14sky including our sun and alpha centauri are part of one enormous collection called the milky way galaxy

06:22this galaxy is shaped like a giant pinwheel with spiral arms of stars rotating around the central hub

06:28the milky way contains somewhere between a hundred and four hundred billion stars that's more stars in

06:35our galaxy alone than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on earth the galaxy stretches about

06:42one hundred thousand light years from one side to the other our solar system sits about halfway

06:47out from the center in one of the spiral arms here's something that really puts things in perspective

06:53for the past 100 years or so humans have been sending radio and television signals out into space

06:59these signals form a bubble around earth that's now about 200 light years across

07:05but our galaxy is a hundred thousand light years across which means our signals have only reached a

07:10tiny fraction of the stars in our own galactic neighborhood to most of the galaxy humanity is

07:16completely invisible and unknown galactic neighbors the local group the milky way doesn't exist alone in

07:24space it's part of a small cluster of galaxies called the local group which contains about 80 galaxies spread

07:31across roughly 10 million light years of space the biggest galaxy in our local group is andromeda which

07:38contains about a trillion stars and is actually heading towards us don't worry though andromeda and

07:44the milky way won't collide for another 4.5 billion years and when they do merge it will happen so slowly

07:51that any life forms around at the time probably won't even notice cosmic cities galaxy clusters

07:59the local group is just one small neighborhood in an even larger structure called the virgo cluster

08:05which contains over 1300 galaxies spread across about 65 million light years and the virgo cluster is

08:13itself part of an even larger structure called the virgo super cluster these super clusters are like

08:20cosmic cities vast collections of galaxies all held together by gravity the virgo super cluster stretches

08:27across 110 million light years and contains thousands of galaxies each with billions of stars the cosmic web

08:36linea kea in recent years astronomers have discovered that even super clusters are part of larger

08:43structures our virgo super cluster belongs to something called linea kea which means immeasurable heaven in

08:51hawaii linea kea is so large it contains over 100 000 galaxies spread across 520 million light years

09:01all these galaxies are slowly flowing towards a mysterious region called the great attractor whose

09:08powerful gravity is pulling entire galaxy clusters toward itself like cosmic rivers flowing toward an ocean

09:16the edge of the known the observable universe as we zoom out to the largest scale possible we reach

09:22the boundary of the observable universe the sphere of space from which light has had time to reach us

09:28since the big fan this observable universe has a radius of about 46.5 billion light years giving it a

09:35total diameter of about 93 billion light years you might wonder how the observable universe can be larger than

09:43its age of 13.8 billion years the answer is that space itself has been expanding since the big bang stretching the

09:51distances between objects as light travels through the universe within this observable universe astronomers

09:58estimate there are at least two trillion galaxies each containing billions or trillions of stars the total

10:06number of stars in the observable universe is probably around 10 followed by 24 zeros a number so large it has

10:14no real meaning to our everyday existence the ultimate mystery what lies beyond but here's the most incredible

10:23part of our cosmic journey the observable universe might be just a tiny fraction of the actual universe

10:30there could be vast regions of space beyond what we can see regions that are expanding away from us so

10:37fast that their light will never reach us some scientists think the universe might be infinite

10:42stretching forever in all directions with no end others believe it might be finite but still

10:48unimaginably large perhaps thousands or millions of times bigger than that we can observe

10:55our cosmic perspective as we complete this mind-bending journey from earth to the edge of the known

11:01universe we're left with a profound realization about our place in existence we began on a small rocky

11:08planet orbiting an ordinary star in the outer regions of a typical galaxy we discovered that this galaxy is

11:15part of increasingly larger numbers each one dwarfing everything contained within it the universe reveals itself to be

11:23almost incomprehensibly vast filled with wonders beyond our imagination yet somehow on one small

11:30world in this cosmic ocean matter organized itself into living beings capable of wondering about it all

11:38we are the universe trying to understand itself tiny specks of consciousness in an infinite sea of space and time

11:47every time we build better telescopes and develop new ways of studying the cosmos

11:52we discover that reality is even stranger and more magnificent than we dared to imagine

11:58we live in an age of unprecedented discovery where we're just beginning to grasp the true scale of

12:05everything that exists in the end our journey through the universe teaches us humility and wonder in

12:12equal measure we are incredibly small but we also are incredibly special perhaps the only beings in

12:19our cosmic neighborhood capable of appreciating the breathtaking beauty and mind-boggling

12:24we during this conversation we David

12:30do

12:31we don't know

The Universe How Big Is It Does It End

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