I have quite a fair knowledge of the universe and our
standing in it. I have grasped the idea
of its expanse, but I know that I cannot fully comprehend just how large that
is.
It is very rare I have to go into detail about anything
because usually there isn’t anyone around me that shares my interest in this
subject, but on February the 21st a little miracle happened. Whilst we were driving back home my partner
turned to me. She wanted to know what
the big bright star was that was to the bottom right of the moon. She suggested that it was the North Star but
I had told her that I was sure it was a planet.
As it got darker another star appeared to the top right of the bright
star. This was a reddish colour and it
had begun to perk her interests.
Later on I looked into it for us and it turned out to be Venus
and Mars. My partner was astonished that
she could not only see them but that she didn’t realise they were so close. I began to explain to her that they were not
close at all and in fact for us to travel there would take quite a while.
She then asked another question, she wanted to know
how close the nearest star was to us. I
looked it up and it was roughly around 4.25 light years away. Her obvious reaction was to try and work that
out into something more fathomable based on our terms. It equated to over 160 trillion miles –
she was blown away.
I then tried to put something together for her hypothetically
for her to try and understand how vast the universe is.
This is what I explained to her:
The universe does not work on our theory of time, it just exists
and we try to interpret it into something understandable and useful. Imagine if we had the technology right now to
travel billions of light years from earth and then look back. Imagine that we had a super powerful
telescope so we could zoom right in on the planet. What would we see? If we timed it right, we would be able
to see the dinosaurs walking around! We
would be able to look back in time and see the planet in a much earlier
state. This is because of the distance
we are away from the earth. If we were 1
billion light years from earth and the planet were to explode, we would not see
it for 1 billion years.
It really is hard to comprehend when you’re working with an
expanse as vast as the universe.
