27 Facts That Will Make You Question Your Existence

Transcript

00:00This is Earth.

00:05This is where you live, and this is where you live in your neighborhood, the solar system.

00:16Here's the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

00:20Doesn't look too far, does it? Think again. At their farthest points, the Earth and the Moon are

00:26252,088 miles away. Inside that distance, you could fit every planet in our entire solar system.

00:33But let's talk about planets. The great red spot on Jupiter, that's about two times as big as Earth.

00:40And Saturn is about nine times wider than Earth.

00:44Saturn's rings are so large that a few of the fragments within them are as large as mountains.

00:50But that's nothing compared to our Sun. Just remember, this is Earth.

00:55And this is Earth from the Moon. This is Earth from Mars.

01:00Here's Earth from just behind Saturn's rings. And here's Earth from just beyond Neptune, four billion miles away.

01:08But a billion's a big number, so let's put that in perspective.

01:11One million seconds equals about eleven and a half days, whereas one billion seconds equals over 31 years.

01:20Let's step back a bit.

01:21Here's the size of Earth compared with the size of our Sun. Terrifying, right?

01:28And here's that exact same Sun from the surface of Mars.

01:34As Carl Sagan once mused,

01:36The total number of stars in the universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth.

01:44And there are some stars out there that are much, much bigger than our little, wimpy Sun.

01:51The biggest star we know of, VY Canis Majoris, is about 2,000 times the diameter of our Sun.

01:59But none of those compares to the size of a galaxy.

02:05In fact, if you shrink the size of our solar system down to the size of a quarter, and shrink the Milky Way galaxy down using the same scale,

02:12the diameter of the Milky Way will be roughly the size of the United States.

02:16That's because the Milky Way galaxy is huge.

02:22Its diameter is about 100,000 light years wide, which, when converted to miles, is about 621 quadrillion,

02:29371 trillion, 192 billion, 237 million, 333,890 miles.

02:38Inside of all of that, is you.

02:41You live in this tiny, tiny portion of the Milky Way.

02:46But even still, our galaxy is a little runt compared with some others.

02:52NGC 6744, a spiral galaxy similar to our own, is twice as wide as the Milky Way, stretching over 200,000 light years across.

03:02It is massive.

03:04But let's think bigger.

03:06In this picture alone, taken by the Hubble Telescope, there are thousands and thousands of galaxies,

03:11each containing millions or billions of stars with their own planets.

03:17Some of the objects seen here may have formed as many as 11 billion years ago, just 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

03:26This period of time is considered one of the busiest star-forming periods.

03:33And just keep this in mind.

03:35That's a picture I took of the Great Big Bang.

03:37This period of time is considered one of the busiest star-forming periods.

03:53And just keep this in mind, that's a picture of a very small, small part of the universe.

04:01So if you're ever feeling upset about your favorite show being cancelled, or the fact

04:04that they play Christmas music way too early, just remember, this is your home, Earth.