The Scale of The Universe

powers of ten are pretty cool they're actually pretty powerful if you know what I'm saying but what is the power of ten in math a power of ten is any integer power of the number ten basically ten multiplied by itself a certain number of times any number of times for example 10 to the power of one is just 10 10 squared is 100 10 cubed is 1000 you get the idea the powers of 10 help us compare the relative size of things here and represents any number you want it's called the order of magnitude positive order of magnitude will make X bigger while a negative number will make X smaller the effect of adding one extra zero to the beginning or end of any number may seem irrelevant but what happens if we take these numbers to the extremes what might these numbers represent believe it or not the powers of 10 actually put our universe into perspective quite nicely let's start with a really small powers of 10 at ten to the negative 35 meters we come to what is known as the Planck length Planck length is the smallest measurable distance in the entire universe much like at the center of a black hole at a scale this tiny the laws of physics break down and cease to be valid the amount of time it takes a photon of light to travel one Planck length is known as the Planck time and is equal to 10 to the negative 43 seconds meaning that this is the shortest measurable time possible any time children this physically has no meaning at all this is why at the moment scientists can only say that the universe came into being after it was already 10 to the negative 43 seconds old getting larger at 10 to the negative 18 meters we reach corpse these are the subatomic particles that compose protons and neutrons 10 to the negative 7 meters we reach the smallest forms of life single-celled organisms at one tenth of a meter you'll find things that you can see like eggs birds and toilet paper at one meter we have everyday life humans dogs blue whales come in at a solid 30 meters next we come across the meaning of life or 42 whatever you decide it is at 270 meters we reach the length of the Titanic triple that and we get the relation of Vatican City the smallest country in the world it's kind of funny because Central Park in New York City is actually four kilometers long and as eight times larger than Vatican City which is an entire country clocking in at 11,000 meters is Phobos Mars is largest moon fun fact one day it's gonna crash into Mars so if we're gonna colonize it we should probably find a way to deal with it with an order of magnitude of 5 we have Hydra one of Pluto's moons even though it's a moon it's only a hundred kilometres across the state of West Virginia in the United States it's actually four times as large there's also about ten to the five hairs on the average human head at 2,300 kilometers in diameter we have everyone's favorite planet Pluto Oh anyway moving on with the order of magnitude of seven we have earth at 12 thousand seven hundred kilometers and a diameter of two hundred thousand kilometers we have Proxima Centauri the closest star to our Sun it's also home to Proxima be an exoplanet with features much like Earth if there were to be a manned mission to any other star systems planets Proxima B would probably be the first choice with an order of magnitude of 9 the Sun clocks in at about a 1.4 million kilometers wide it accounts for more than ninety nine point eight percent of the mass in our solar system at ten powers of 10 we come across the overs of Mercury Venus and Earth ranging from 36 billion kilometers from the Sun all the way to 93 million kilometers although these orbits seem pretty big they're dwarfed by one of the most luminous stars in the sky the pistil star at 470 million kilometers wide it radiates as much energy in 20 seconds as our Sun does in one whole year but the pistil star is nothing when compared to the largest star ever discovered you WAIS Cuddy it is over two billion kilometres wide and if it were to replace our Sun it would completely swallow the planets of Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter and Saturn at 26 billion kilometers we reach what is known as a light day it is exactly how far light travels in 24 hours this distance is currently farther than any human or Space trope has ever traveled at 10 to the 14 metres away from Earth our solar system appears only as a small point of light in the sky just like every other star that we see in the night sky 10 to the 15 meters we have the cat's eye nebula one of the most complex nebulae ever discovered the entire nebula is nearly half a Lightyear in diameter at 2 light-years away from Earth we reach the Oort cloud a region of space filled with water and methane ice at this far distance the sun's gravity no longer has an effect on objects past this point other stars are stronger at 10 to the 17 metres we have a familiar sight the pillars of creation each pillar is over 5 light years long that's about 48 trillion kilometers each everyone has seen these before however they won't last forever they're actually already gone the pillars of creation are located at about 7,000 light years of Earth but about 6,000 years ago they were destroyed by a nearby supernova meaning that in 1,000 years they'll fade away from our view and disappear into the darkness of space skipping forward to 10 to the 21 metres away from Earth we can finally see the Milky Way galaxy in its entirety every star in the night sky that you can see lies within our galaxy however at 10 to the 22 metres we've reached the distance to our nearest neighboring galaxy Andromeda you can actually see Andromeda in the night sky with a simple pair of binoculars or normal telescope 10 to the 23 metres we reach what is known as the local group its name pretty much tells you what it is it's the Local Group of galaxies that are near the Milky Way we're actually the second largest just behind Andromeda the local group is a part of the Virgo cluster a group of galaxies just like the Loko group except much larger the Virgo cluster contains about 1,500 galaxies and is over 15 million light-years long at 10 to the 24 metres away from Earth we come across the anomaly known as the Great Attractor see objects with a lot of mass have a stronger gravitational pull that's why planets have moons and you don't they're a lot more massive than you are however the Great Attractor is a bit different it's pulling clusters of galaxies towards it but we can observe or see what it is it's an object where the mass tens of thousands of times larger than the Milky Way's but we don't even know what it is at 10 billion light-years from Earth we come across the largest known object in the universe the Hercules Corona borealis great wall it's a bit of a mouthful but rightfully so why because it physically should not exist it is 10 billion light years long 7 billion light years wide and nearly 1 billion light years deep this means that light will take 10 billion years to cross the entire wall only once to put it into perspective the universe is only 13.8 billion years old and the time that Earth has been a planet about four-and-a-half billion years the light that has left of one end of the great wall hasn't even made it halfway to the other side yet structure is so big it breaks laws of physics there is something in the world of science known as the cosmological principle to put it simply it says no matter where you are in the universe if you look in any direction you should see an even distribution of matter this in turn creates a limit for the sizes of objects it's about 1.2 billion light years meaning that this structure is eight times the supposedly m't of the largest object possible and at ten to the twenty seven meters away from Earth we reach the outer limits of the observable universe this is as far as we can go and most likely we'll ever be able to and thus our journey ends just 27 steps ago we were back at earth back at life as we know it but the most amazing thing to me is that we travel to the outer limits of our universe as we know it reaching the largest structures known in the entire universe and only took us 27 steps 27 orders of magnitude but in order to travel to the tiniest limits known to man at the Planck length we have to take 35 steps backwards from the human level this means that we are eight orders of magnitude or about 100 million times larger compared to the smallest thing there is that the universe is compared to us and that I find is the most interesting thing of them all this video was made possible by brilliant org whether you're a novice or a PhD student brilliant has tons of online courses that can help even the smartest of people learn new and challenging ideas brilliant lets you learn at your own speed so you don't have to work at a snail's pace best thing is they get right to the point so you don't waste any of your time you can learn about some of those challenging topics and ideas and end up with a solid 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Channel: Aperture

Views: 520,382

Keywords: The Scale of the Universe, Powers of Ten, aperture, how big is the universe, size of the universe, power of 10, universe size comparison, how big is the galaxy, milky way, andromeda, orders of magnitude, cosmic voyage, universe, how big is space, how big is the milky way, universe size, size comparison of the universe, planck length, proxima centauri, size of earth, planet comparison, Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, space, biggest thing in the universe, documentary

Id: Hy8VtYYdI9g

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 06 2018