43,000 Galaxies

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• Dodecahedron0

  I'm sure a lot of people have heard of the stars in the galaxy vs grains of sand on a beach analogy... there are about the same amount of stars in the galaxy, around 200 billion, as there are grains of sand on a beach.

  I found it hard to imagine but it is almost about true. Around half a billion grains of sand = about a cubic meter of sand, so times that by 400 and you have 200 billion grains of sand that would = a small sized beach, 400 cubic meters of sand.

  Its not easy to understand still... to really get what a galaxy is in terms of size you have to now take all of these grains of sand a let them hover in space with hundreds of meters between each and every single one of them to be proportionally the same as a galaxy. Picture every single grain of sand on a beach with a huge distance in between and let them float in space swirling around. Its a really big cloud of sand.

  Dodecahedron 0Permalink

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  • I visualize the spread out grains of sand by imagining they are starsribit
  • not sure exactly how many meters would be in between the grains, i didn't do the math. it would be dozens of meters if not hundreds though.Dodecahedron
  • ...not hundreds.Dodecahedron
  • and it wouldn't even be a cloud of sand it would be like one grain here ...and one grain way over there etcDodecahedron

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