Collectively as a species,
humans have failed to understand where we are located in the universe. While we
can approximately figure out where we are located in our galaxy, and
consequently the universe, we have completely failed at understanding the
vastness of our universe. The universe is massive, it so vast that we are still
trying to build telescope capable of seeing its edge.
Updated version of the previous article.
Proof of that was obtained
by the Hubble Space telescope when astronomers pointed Hubble’s lenses towards
an area in the sky for four months—approximately a tenth site of the fool
moon—which appeared to be complete blackness with NO stars visible to the naked
eye. Hubble proved, once again, how mistaken we were.
After four months of
intensive observations, the Hubble space telescope gave astronomers the
surprise of their life. Located more than 13 BILLION light years away, the
Hubble space telescope found countless galaxies, each galaxy containing around
one trillion stars.
In the images gathered by
the Hubble, Space telescopes are over 10,000 galaxies, in one small area of the
sky alone. Have you ever asked yourself how many stars are there in the
universe? Or even tried imaging?
According to astronomers,
there are around 10 billion galaxies in the observable universe alone. The
number of stars in a galaxy is different from each galaxy to the other, but
assuming an average of 100 billion stars per galaxy would suggest that there
are about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s 1 billion trillion) stars in
the observable universe.
With our current technology,
we are very limited when it comes to astronomical observations, but given the
data we have gathered so far, we can see that the universe is so big, that it’s
even hard to imagine. Interestingly, astronomers can only observe parts of the
universe that are located within 13.7 billion light-years of our planet. This
is because the ‘big bang’ occurred some 13.7 billion years ago.
Curiously, light from stars
that are located farther than 13.7 billion light-years away has not had time to
reach us yet.
This has lead numerous
scientists to suggest that the universe must be much bigger than the universe
that we can observe at this time, which means that there may be many more stars
out there, stars we are still not able to observe. To understand just how big
space is, within 13.7 billion light years, astronomers can see approximately 50
billion galaxies, each of which is made of around 100 billion stars.
The Milky Way galaxy—our
cosmic oasis and home to our solar system—is believed to contain between 200
and 400 billion stars and at least 100 billion planets. The exact figure
depends on the number of very-low-mass stars, which are hard to detect,
especially at distances of more than 300 ly (90 pc) from the Sun.
"approximately a tenth site of the fool moon—whcih" Can you guys please start spell checking lol
ReplyDeletefool moon?
ReplyDelete...whcih??? Come on Guys, lol
Technology at work:. "tenth site of the fool moon—whcih appeared"
ReplyDelete