How Big Is It?

Have you ever looked up at the sky and wondered, “How big is it?”  I mean when you’re not stoned; a genuine thirst for knowledge.  Well, here’s a shocker, nobody knows.  We do know that it is pretty huge.  I mean, it’s the universe and all.  And maybe we should consider rethinking the term universe.  Originally, we used the term universe to describe everything.  For people of faith, it meant God’s creation.  Now we really have no idea what the universe is (I mean physically; if you’ve wired it philosophically, good for you).

Edwin Hubble

Scientifically, until the twentieth century, astronomers believed that the physical universe was what we know today to be the Milky Way galaxy; our galaxy.  Then in 1924 Edwin Hubble concluded several spiral nebulae he was observing were too distant to be part of the Milky Way and were in fact galaxies outside of our own (see The Big Pffft! May 9, 2013) .  Thus the universe grew exponentially with the publication of his work.  With advances in telescope technology and observational technique thousand of galaxies were mapped, again increasing the size of our universe.

Then, along came another Hubble.  Well, a telescope bearing the name of our hero.  In 1995 (were you born yet?) The Hubble Orbiting Telescope was used to make a long exposure (probably archaic language on my part, but when I was taking pictures we were still using film) of a heretofore seemingly empty piece of sky in Ursa Major (the Big Dipper, north).  The target area is just 2.5 arcminutes across (sorry, I don’t know what that means either) which is about one 24-millionth (oh, there’s a number I can relate to – NOT!) of the whole sky.  Anyway, it is small!

“And what did they fine, Dale?”  Well little ones, they found 3,000 identifiable galaxies out there that had never been seen before.

There's Pie?

“Is that a lot, Dale?”  Well, while three thousand is a number we can relate to, remember they were looking at a very small piece of the sky.  Kind of like that skinny piece of pumpkin pie you get at Thanksgiving while your cousin gets a quarter of the pie.

“Thanks for putting it into terms we can relate to, Dale.”  My pleasure, children… my pleasure; but I digress.

Now here is the only math we’re going to do today. Assuming an even distribution of matter throughout the universe (and the Hubble Deep Field Image seems to suggest it is), the answer to how many galaxies are there (that we can see) is the product of 3,000 X 24,000,000!  No, I don’t know what to call that number linguistically, but numerically it would be 72 with a poop load of zeros behind it, like nine or something.  So is that 72x10⁹?  I get so confused with this math speak.

Well in any communication method, that’s a lot.  And we can’t even see all the way back to the beginning, yet.  And we haven’t even begun to consider the notion of multi-verse yet.

Okay then, back to the original question.  How big is it?  Pretty friggin’ big!  Yes, you will be held accountable for this information on the final.