“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
Per wikipedia:
The observable universe contains as many as an estimated 2 trillion galaxies and, overall, as many as an estimated 10^24 stars – more stars (and earth-like planets) than all the grains of beach sand on planet Earth. The estimated total number of stars in an inflationary universe (observed and unobserved) is 10^100.
IMO, a trillion is a number the human mind has trouble conceiving. We understand it only in an abstract sense - if you try to imagine what a trillion stars looks like in front of you, or a billion, or a million even, most likely you're imagining at best tens of thousands. 10^24 is orders of magnitude more abstract:
I have always found the analogy all the grains of sand on the beaches of earth to be something that helps accurately convey large numbers to myself and others.
Somethings I’ve always wondered about this analogy:
1 – at what depth are they referring to, i.e. if you’re at a beach and dig down two feet you’re still Coming in contact with sand (and grains of sand). Do these count also?
2 – if you wade out into the ocean and go underwater, there are also more grains of sand under the water (are these included?).
(what about all the grains of sand on the various vast deserts around earth?)
For number two I would assume NO as the analogy says all the grains of sand on the earths beaches a beach.
Forget the universe, just consider the size of the Milky Way. If the Milky Way was shrunk down to the size of United States, the Earth would be smaller than the gap between the ridges in a fingerprint.
Per wikipedia:
The observable universe contains as many as an estimated 2 trillion galaxies and, overall, as many as an estimated 10^24 stars – more stars (and earth-like planets) than all the grains of beach sand on planet Earth. The estimated total number of stars in an inflationary universe (observed and unobserved) is 10^100.
IMO, a trillion is a number the human mind has trouble conceiving. We understand it only in an abstract sense - if you try to imagine what a trillion stars looks like in front of you, or a billion, or a million even, most likely you're imagining at best tens of thousands. 10^24 is orders of magnitude more abstract:
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000