How Big is Space_ We Asked a NASA Expert

Nasa Space

How big is space? It’s one of the most mind-bending questions we can ask because the deeper we look, the more the universe keeps going. We’ve measured billions of light-years in every direction and still haven’t reached the edge.   Click This link for More information   https://otieu.com/4/9412360

Transcript

00:00Space is really big. Thinking about our solar system, let's imagine you could get in a car

00:10and drive to Pluto at highway speeds. It would take you about 6,000 years to get there. When

00:16we start to think about other stars outside of our solar system, we need to think about

00:20another unit of distance. This is why astronomers use the unit light years. Light travels at 186,000

00:27miles per second. One light year is about 6 trillion miles. The closest star to our Sun is about

00:33four light years away. Our own Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. We know from

00:41deep field images of the universe that there are hundreds of billions, perhaps a trillion,

00:45other galaxies. Using some of the deepest images yet from JWST, we've been able to see galaxies that

00:51emitted their light about 13 and a half billion years ago. Now here's a really important thing.

00:56Because the universe is expanding, those most distant galaxies are actually much further away

01:01than 13 and a half billion light years. I'm glossing over some math here, but we can estimate that the

01:07observable universe is about 92 billion light years across. But we're pretty sure that the universe is

01:14even bigger than what we can see. And here's where things get really weird. We don't actually know if

01:20the universe is finite or infinite. As much as we've learned about the universe, science has no

01:25reliable estimate of the actual size of the entire universe.

Category

Transcript

Recommended