The Spec of Dust that we are

The Spec of Dust that we are

While we may feel like the center of our own world on Earth, the reality is that our planet and even our entire solar system are minuscule in the grand scheme of the universe.

The Earth, our home, has a radius of about 6,378 kilometers (3,959 miles). the sun could accommodate roughly 333,000 earths

This means that if you were to shrink the Earth down to the size of a grain of sand, our solar system – consisting of the Sun and all the orbiting planets, moons, asteroids and other objects – would fit comfortably in the palm of your hand.

Zooming out further, our solar system is just a tiny part of the Milky Way galaxy, which contains an estimated 200-400 billion stars. If you were to hold our solar system in your hand, the entire Milky Way galaxy would span the size of North America.

And the Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies that make up the observable universe. Astronomers estimate there could be upwards of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe.

The observable universe itself has a diameter of about 93 billion light-years.

These mind-boggling scales illustrate just how insignificant our planet and even our entire solar system are in the grand cosmic scheme.

We are like a speck of dust in an unimaginably vast universe filled with trillions upon trillions of stars and galaxies. Truly, the physical size of our existence on Earth is minuscule compared to the immensity of the cosmos.

Structures Larger than Galaxies

However, there are several cosmic structures that are even larger than individual galaxies:

1. The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall:

   • This is considered the largest known structure in the observable universe, measuring approximately 10 billion light-years in length.

   • It is a massive galaxy filament, a vast cluster of galaxies bound together by gravity.

2. The Huge-LQG (Large Quasar Group):

   • This is the largest known large quasar group, containing 73 quasars and spanning about 4 billion light-years across.

   • Quasars are extremely luminous active galactic nuclei, powered by supermassive black holes.

3. The Laniakea Supercluster:

   • Our Milky Way galaxy is part of the Laniakea Supercluster, which contains around 100,000 galaxies and stretches over 520 million light-years.

4. The Shapley Supercluster:

   • This is the largest known structure in the local universe, containing over 8,000 galaxies and with a mass of more than 10 million billion times the mass of the Sun.

5. The Saraswati Supercluster:

   • This supercluster consists of 43 massive galaxy clusters spanning about 650 million light-years.

So in summary, while our planet and solar system are minuscule compared to the scale of the Milky Way galaxy, there are even larger cosmic structures that dwarf individual galaxies. The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is considered the largest known structure in the observable universe.