Size of the Universe

Like what?

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/06/21/the-hubble-deep-field-the-most-important-image-ever-taken.aspx

Cosmic View the Universe in 40 Jumps by Kees Boeke
Cosmic View the Universe in 40 Jumps by Kees Boeke - 1957

The book takes the reader on a journey of scale -- jumping by powers of ten meters (1 meter, 10 meters, 100 meters) to give a sense of the smallness of our Galaxy relative to the Universe... and then jumps back to the same starting point and then works its way through innerspace (.1 meters, .01 meters, etc.) to the atomic level.

This is one of my favorite books I read as an adult with no space science education. We know more about the Universe now than Boeke knew in 1957, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The book inspired a short film, "Powers of Ten", and the creators of that short film (Philip and Phylis Morrison) went on to produce a book by the same title ("Powers of Ten") which covers the same basic ground as "Cosmic View" -- but with photographs replacing some of the hand-drawn illustrations of the original, and with more in-depth commentary on the implications of size at each "power of ten". The newer book is geared much more at the adult level -- it is a "Scientific American" branded book after all -- but is nonetheless appealing for people of all ages.

Powers of Ten: A Book About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero (Paperback)
by Philip Morrison (Author), Phylis Morrison (Author), Office of Charles and Ray Eames (Author)

Review by B. Marold:

`Powers of Ten' by Philip and Phylis Morrison and `The Office of Charles and Ray Eames' is one of those non-fiction classics which everyone gets around to buying or at least browsing in the library before they reach the age of forty. In fact, I'm quite surprised to see that the book was copyrighted in 1982, since it seems as if it has been around for decades, easily going back as far as the 1950's.

Part of this impression may be due to the fact that the concept is so simple. The heart of the book is a series of forty-two (42) photographs, or simulated photographs, each showing a view exactly 1/10th the size of the previous view. One thing that confirms the vintage of the book is that the views near the middle of the series, those from near outer space, are genuine photographs from some NASA platform or other.

One similar book that comes to mind is `Flatland', the `fictional' description of a three-dimensional person visiting a two-dimensional world. A similar work, far more whimsical than these two, is `The Point and the Line'. One advantage the geometrically premised works have on `Powers of Ten' is that their underlying mathematical bases are virtually secure for the ages. Not so with our `Powers of Ten'. Even my layman's knowledge of modern physics can spot at least two out of date aspects in the book. The first I spotted was the statement that the largest share of mass in the universe is in stars. Modern theory posits a mysterious moiety called `dark matter', which now explains a lot of facts about astrophysics which were a mystery under the `all mass in stars' point of view. The second out of date perspective is the absence of any fine detail at the sub-atomic particle level. In the early 1980's, the most advanced physics relied entirely on a particle-based paradigm for sub-atomic structures (The last quantum physics advance cited is the hypothesis of quarks). Since the mid-1980s, the theory of choice is based on strings or even `superstrings'. The conjectural pictures at this level know nothing of vibrating strings. The `big' perspectives also don't really do justice to hypotheses about deep space entities such as black holes and quasars.

Still, this is a great classic. If, for no other reason than it is a great tutorial on getting someone acquainted with the metric system of measuring distances, as all steps are in tenths or tens of a meter. On a more general level, this is a great little lesson in the history of physical science, as the book contains a chronology of the discoveries that pushed our perceptions of the world in one direction (big) or the other (small).

Any family with at least one scientifically curious child should own a copy of this little gem!

I like thinking about how big the universe is.

It makes me feel good.

Sometimes when I'm outside and look at the clear blue sky, I think about what's beyond, and beyond....

It is amazing to think about.

When i was watching that video, I just kept thinking about each little light having an 'earth' orbiting, with billions of people on it and all of a sudden, many things were just not important anymore..

just one of the many services provided by our universe.

I watched that video, it says the universe has a radius of 47 billion light years, where did it get that number from? Also at the end it says "This is a picture of 47 billion light years". Does this mean he thinks it is that far away? If so it has tp have been there to send the light from 47 billion light years away, it must also have been there 47 billion years ago. So it must have moved even further away in that time, thus the universe would have a much bigger radius than 47 billion light years.

I like thinking the same. That makes me feel very very small.

A lot of people say that

Makes me think that I'm a part of it all.

Had you previously thought you were not part of it all Chai?

How anybody might arrive at such a position I can't imagine.

then you must not have much of an imagination.

That must explain why I can't imagine what you mean Chai and why I also can't imagine how your statement is any use in a discussion. It is the verbal equivalent of slamming the door and that has no effect where I come from.

Some concepts for the non astronomers:

1. The Universe (or our Hubble Sphere / Light cone) showing the illuminated surroundings is believed to be 13.7 billion years old and between 120 - 200 billion light years in "diameter" (simplifying that is has a regular shape or topology).

2. The observable portion a lot bigger than age times the speed of light, because light isn't simply travelling through a static, mostly unchanging medium - the Universe's "framework" (space time) itself is expanding an apparently at an increasing rate.

3. This rate of expansion of the universe's framework (or underlying space time reality) isn't necessarily limited by relativity to the speed of light. Relativity only limits objects, light, information travelling within a relativistic medium (normal space - outside of black holes or cosmic strings) beyond a set limit - it doesn't say what the media itself (space-time) must confirm to when it comes to inflation / expansion or deflation. Put another way - a galaxy is a relativistic environment within its confines - but the empty space time between our Milky Way galaxy and its near neighbour Andromea isn't "proven" to be relativistic - we don't yet have evidence that empty space has to obey relativity surprisingly enough!

So imagine two runners setting off in opposite directions at 10km/hour. Now place them on a huge rubber band and stretch the rubber band at 1000 km/hour - this is exactly the kind of scenario astrophysicists have to contend with when considering the size of the Universe.

Now our Hubble sphere may be a lot smaller than the "edge of the universe" - it might be the boundary to the start of the shock wave of the local portion of our creation event. So two factors there - 1) the shock wave (that COBE images) may be billions or trillions of light years thick - we have no way of knowing. Secondly the universe we believe initially inflated we model around 50,000 times faster than light speed. So its entirely possible it fragmented like a grenade into many pieces and all our reality is only one piece - causally disconnected from all the other pieces. Then again the true universe might have countless "grenades of reality" going pop all the time - or existence might be scale fractal (aka scale relativity) and we are only aware of its pattern at our level of existence (it may have no largest or smallest size - any fractal is endless).

Thank you so much g_day, fascinating stuff!

g-day
g-day, I love fractals:

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/fractals.htm

BBB