The scale of the universe from the atom. The size of the universe

which are on it. In the bulk, we are all chained to the place where we live and work. The size of our world is amazing, but it is absolutely nothing compared to the universe. As they say - "born too late to explore the world and too early to explore space". It's even embarrassing. However, let's get started - just look so that your head does not spin.

1. This is the Earth.

This is the same planet that is currently the only home for humanity. The place where life magically appeared (or maybe not so magically) and where we appeared in the course of evolution.

2. Our place in the solar system.

The nearest large space objects that surround us, of course, are our neighbors in the solar system. Everyone remembers their names from childhood, and at the lessons of the world around them they sculpt models. It so happened that even among them we are not the biggest ...

3. The distance between our Earth and the Moon.

It doesn't seem that far, does it? And if we take into account modern speeds, then there is nothing at all.

4. In fact - far enough.

If you try, then very accurately and comfortably - between the planet and the satellite, you can easily place the rest of the planets of the solar system.

5. However, let's continue talking about the planets.

in front of you North America, as if it were placed on Jupiter. Yes, this small green speck is North America. Can you imagine how huge our Earth would be if we moved it to the scale of Jupiter? People would probably still discover new lands)

6. This is Earth compared to Jupiter.

Nuuu, or rather six Earths - for clarity.

7. Rings of Saturn, sir.

The rings of Saturn would have such a gorgeous view, with the condition that they revolve around the Earth. Look at Polynesia - looks a bit like an Opera icon, right?

8. Compare the Earth with the Sun?

It doesn't look that big in the sky...

9. This view opens up to the Earth, if you look at it from the moon.

It's beautiful, right? So lonely against the backdrop of empty space. Or not empty? Let's continue...

10. And so from Mars

I bet you wouldn't know if it's Earth.

11. This is a picture of the Earth just outside the rings of Saturn

12. But behind Neptune.

Only 4.5 billion kilometers. How long would you search?

13. So, let's go back to the star called the Sun.

An exciting sight, isn't it?

14. Here is the Sun from the surface of Mars.

15. And here is its comparison with the Scales of the star VY Big Dog.

How are you? More than impressive. Can you imagine what kind of energy is concentrated there?

16. But this is all garbage, if we compare our native star with the size of the Milky Way galaxy.

To make it clearer, imagine that we have compressed our Sun to the size of a white blood cell. In this case, the size of the Milky Way is quite comparable to the size of Russia, for example. This is the Milky Way.

17. In general, the stars are huge

Everything that is placed in this yellow circle is everything that you can see at night from Earth. The rest is not visible to the naked eye.

18. But there are also other galaxies.

Here is the Milky Way compared to the galaxy IC 1011, located 350 million light years from Earth.

Let's go one more time, shall we?

So this is Earth, our home.

Scale down to size solar system…

Let's take a little more...

And now to the size of the Milky Way ...

Let's keep decreasing...

And further…

Almost done, don't worry...

Ready! The finish!

This is all that humanity can now observe, using modern technology. It's not even an ant... Judge for yourself, just don't go crazy...

Such scales do not even fit in the head. But someone declares with confidence that we are alone in the universe, although they themselves are not really sure whether the Americans were on the moon or not.

Hold on guys... hold on.

There were times when the world of people was limited to the surface of the Earth under their feet. With the development of technology, mankind has expanded its horizons. Now people are thinking about whether our world has boundaries and what is the scale of the Universe? In fact, no one can imagine its real dimensions. Because we do not have suitable reference points. Even professional astronomers draw for themselves (at least in their imagination) models reduced many times over. The fundamental thing is the exact correlation of the dimensions that the objects of the Universe have. And when deciding math problems they are generally unimportant, because they turn out to be just numbers that the astronomer operates on.

About the structure of the solar system

To talk about the scale of the universe, you must first understand what is closest to us. First, it is a star called the Sun. Secondly, the planets revolving around it. In addition to these, there are also satellites moving around some And we should not forget about

The planets on this list have been of interest to people for a long time, since they are the most accessible for observation. From their study began to develop the science of the structure of the universe - astronomy. A star is recognized as the center of the solar system. It is also its largest object. Compared to the Earth, the Sun is a million times larger in volume. It only seems relatively small, because it is far removed from our planet.

All the planets in the solar system are divided into three groups:

• Earth. It includes planets that are similar to the Earth in appearance. For example, these are Mercury, Venus and Mars.
• Giant objects. They are much larger than the first group. In addition, they contain a lot of gases, which is why they are also called gas. These include Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
• Dwarf planets. They are, in fact, large asteroids. One of them, until recently, was included in the composition of the main planets - this is Pluto.

The planets "do not scatter" from the Sun due to the force of gravity. And they cannot fall on a star because of the high speeds. Objects are really very "nimble". For example, the speed of the Earth is approximately 30 kilometers per second.

How to compare the sizes of objects in the solar system?

Before you try to imagine the scale of the universe, it is worth understanding the Sun and the planets. After all, they are also difficult to correlate with each other. Most often, the conditional size of a fiery star is identified with a billiard ball, the diameter of which is 7 cm. It should be noted that in reality it reaches about 1400 thousand km. In such a "toy" layout, the first planet from the Sun (Mercury) is at a distance of 2 meters 80 centimeters. In this case, the ball of the Earth will have a diameter of only half a millimeter. It is located at a distance of 7.6 meters from the star. The distance to Jupiter on this scale would be 40 m, and to Pluto 300.

If we talk about objects that are outside the solar system, then the closest star is Proxima Centauri. It will be removed so much that this simplification turns out to be too small. And this despite the fact that it is located within the Galaxy. What to say about the scale of the universe. As you can see, it is virtually unlimited. I always want to know how the Earth and the Universe relate. And after receiving the answer, one cannot believe that our planet and even the Galaxy is an insignificant part of the vast world.

What units are used to measure distances in space?

A centimeter, a meter, and even a kilometer - all these quantities turn out to be negligible already within the solar system. What to say about the universe. To indicate the distance within the Galaxy, a quantity called a light year is used. This is the time it takes for light to travel in one year. Recall that one light second is equal to almost 300 thousand km. Therefore, when translated into familiar kilometers, a light year turns out to be approximately equal to 10 thousand billion. It is impossible to imagine it, therefore the scale of the Universe is unimaginable for a person. If you need to specify the distance between neighboring galaxies, then the light year is insufficient. An even larger size is needed. It turned out to be a parsec, which is equal to 3.26 light years.

How is the galaxy organized?

It is a giant formation consisting of stars and nebulae. A small part of them is visible every night in the sky. The structure of our galaxy is very complex. It can be considered as a highly compressed ellipsoid of revolution. Moreover, it has an equatorial part and a center. Equator of the Galaxy for the most part make up gaseous nebulae and hot massive stars. V Milky Way this part is in its central region.

The solar system is no exception to the rule. It is also located near the equator of the Galaxy. By the way, the main part of the stars forms a huge disk, the diameter of which is 100 thousand and the thickness is 1500. If we return to the scale that was used to represent the solar system, then the dimensions of the Galaxy will become commensurate. This is an incredible figure. Therefore, the Sun and the Earth turn out to be crumbs in the Galaxy.

What objects exist in the universe?

We list the most basic:

• Stars are massive self-luminous balls. They arise from an environment consisting of a mixture of dust and gases. Most of them are hydrogen and helium.
• Relic radiation. They are propagating in space. Its temperature is 270 degrees Celsius. Moreover, this radiation is the same in all directions. This property is called isotropy. In addition, some mysteries of the Universe are associated with it. For example, it became clear that it arose at the moment big bang. That is, it exists from the very beginning of the existence of the Universe. It also confirms the idea that it expands equally in all directions. And this statement is true not only for the present time. So it was in the very beginning.
• That is the hidden mass. These are the objects of the Universe that cannot be studied by direct observation. In other words, they do not radiate electromagnetic waves. But they have a gravitational effect on other bodies.
• Black holes. They are not well studied, but very well known. This happened due to the mass description of such objects in fantastic works. In fact, a black hole is a body from which electromagnetic radiation cannot propagate due to the fact that the second space velocity on it is equal. It is worth remembering that it is the second space velocity that must be communicated to an object so that it leaves the space object.

In addition, there are quasars and pulsars in the Universe.

mysterious universe

It is full of what has not yet been fully discovered, not studied. And what has been discovered often throws up new questions and related mysteries of the universe. Even the well-known Big Bang theory can be attributed to them. It is really only a provisional doctrine, since humanity can only guess how it happened.

The second mystery is the age of the universe. It can be calculated approximately from the already mentioned relic radiation, observation of globular clusters and other objects. Today, scientists agree that the age of the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years. Another mystery - if life on other planets? After all, not only in the solar system, suitable conditions arose, and the Earth appeared. And the Universe, most likely, is filled with similar formations.

One?

What is outside the universe? What is there where the human eye has not penetrated? Is there something beyond this border? If so, how many universes are there? These are questions that scientists have yet to find answers to. Our world is like a box of surprises. It once seemed to be made up of only the Earth and the Sun, with a small number of stars in the sky. Then the outlook expanded. As a result, the boundaries have expanded. Not surprisingly, many bright minds have long come to the conclusion that the Universe is only part of an even larger entity.

The sizes of objects of the Universe in comparison (photo)

1. This is the Earth! We live here. At first glance, it is very large. But, in fact, compared to some objects in the universe, our planet is negligible. The following photos will help you at least roughly imagine what just does not fit in your head.

2. The location of the planet Earth in the solar system.

3. Scaled distance between the Earth and the Moon. Doesn't look too far, does it?

4. Within this distance, you can place all the planets of our solar system, nice and neat.

5. This little green spot is the mainland of North America, on the planet Jupiter. You can imagine how much larger Jupiter is than the Earth.

6. And this photo gives an idea of ​​the size of the planet Earth (that is, our six planets) compared to Saturn.

7. This is what the rings of Saturn would look like if they were around the Earth. Beauty!

8. Hundreds of comets fly between the planets of the solar system. This is how the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet, on which the Philae probe landed in the fall of 2014, looks in comparison with Los Angeles.

9. But all objects in the solar system are negligible compared to our Sun.

10. This is how our planet looks from the surface of the moon.

11. This is how our planet looks from the surface of Mars.

12. And this is us from Saturn.

13. If you fly to the edge of the solar system, you will see our planet like this.

14. Let's go back a little. This is the size of the Earth compared to the size of our Sun. Impressive, isn't it?

15. And this is our Sun from the surface of Mars.

16. But our Sun is only one of the stars in the Universe. Their number is more than grains of sand on any beach on Earth.

17. And this means that there are stars much larger than our Sun. Just look how tiny the Sun is compared to the largest star VY known to date in the constellation Canis Major.

18. But no star can compare with the size of our Milky Way Galaxy. If we reduce our Sun to the size of a white blood cell and reduce the entire Galaxy by the same factor, then the Milky Way will be the size of Russia.

19. Our Milky Way Galaxy is huge. We live around here.

20. Unfortunately, all objects that we can see with the naked eye in the sky at night are placed in this yellow circle.

21. But the Milky Way is far from the most big galaxy in the Universe. This is the Milky Way compared to Galaxy IC 1011, which is 350 million light-years from Earth.

22. But that's not all. Thousands and thousands of galaxies are photographed in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope, each containing millions of stars and their planets.

23. For example, one of the galaxies in the photo, UDF 423. This galaxy is ten billion light years from Earth. When you look at this photo, you are looking back billions of years.

24. This dark piece of the night sky looks completely empty. But when you zoom in, it turns out that it contains thousands of galaxies with billions of stars.

25. And this is the size of the black hole compared to the size of the Earth's orbit and the orbit of the planet Neptune.

One such black abyss could easily suck up the entire solar system.

Did you know that the universe we observe has pretty definite boundaries? We are accustomed to associate the Universe with something infinite and incomprehensible. but modern science to the question of the "infinity" of the Universe offers a completely different answer to such an "obvious" question.

According to modern concepts, the size of the observable universe is approximately 45.7 billion light years (or 14.6 gigaparsecs). But what do these numbers mean?

The first question that comes to the mind of an ordinary person is how the Universe cannot be infinite at all? It would seem that it is indisputable that the receptacle of everything that exists around us should not have boundaries. If these boundaries exist, what do they even represent?

Suppose some astronaut flew to the borders of the universe. What will he see before him? Solid wall? Fire barrier? And what is behind it - emptiness? Another universe? But can emptiness or another Universe mean that we are on the border of the universe? It doesn't mean that there is "nothing". Emptiness and another Universe is also “something”. But the Universe is that which contains absolutely everything “something”.

We arrive at an absolute contradiction. It turns out that the border of the Universe should hide from us something that should not be. Or the boundary of the Universe should fence off “everything” from “something”, but this “something” should also be a part of “everything”. In general, complete absurdity. Then how can scientists claim the ultimate size, mass, and even age of our universe? These values, although unimaginably large, are still finite. Does science argue with the obvious? To deal with this, let's first look at how people came to the modern understanding of the universe.

Expanding the boundaries

From time immemorial, man has been interested in what the world around them is like. You can not give examples of the three whales and other attempts of the ancients to explain the universe. As a rule, in the end it all came down to the fact that the basis of all things is the earthly firmament. Even in the times of antiquity and the Middle Ages, when astronomers had extensive knowledge of the laws of motion of the planets along the “fixed” celestial sphere, the Earth remained the center of the Universe.

Naturally, even in Ancient Greece there were those who believed that the earth revolves around the sun. There were those who talked about the many worlds and the infinity of the universe. But constructive justifications for these theories arose only at the turn of the scientific revolution.

In the 16th century, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus made the first major breakthrough in the knowledge of the universe. He firmly proved that the Earth is only one of the planets revolving around the Sun. Such a system greatly simplified the explanation of such a complex and intricate motion of the planets in the celestial sphere. In the case of a stationary Earth, astronomers had to come up with all sorts of ingenious theories to explain this behavior of the planets. On the other hand, if the Earth is assumed to be mobile, then the explanation for such intricate movements comes naturally. Thus, a new paradigm called "heliocentrism" was strengthened in astronomy.

Many Suns

However, even after this, astronomers continued to confine the universe to the "sphere fixed stars". Until the 19th century, they were unable to estimate the distance to the luminaries. For several centuries, astronomers have unsuccessfully tried to detect deviations in the position of stars relative to the Earth's orbital motion (annual parallaxes). The tools of those times did not allow for such accurate measurements.

Finally, in 1837, the Russian-German astronomer Vasily Struve measured the parallax. This marked a new step in understanding the scale of the cosmos. Now scientists could safely say that the stars are distant likenesses of the Sun. And our luminary is no longer the center of everything, but an equal “resident” of an endless star cluster.

Astronomers have come even closer to understanding the scale of the universe, because the distances to the stars turned out to be truly monstrous. Even the size of the orbits of the planets seemed insignificant compared to this something. Next, it was necessary to understand how the stars are concentrated in.

Many Milky Ways

As early as 1755, the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant anticipated the foundations of the modern understanding of the large-scale structure of the universe. He hypothesized that the Milky Way is a huge rotating star cluster. In turn, many observable nebulae are also more distant "milky ways" - galaxies. Despite this, until the 20th century, astronomers adhered to the fact that all nebulae are sources of star formation and are part of the Milky Way.

The situation changed when astronomers learned to measure the distances between galaxies using. The absolute luminosity of stars of this type is strictly dependent on the period of their variability. Comparing their absolute luminosity with the visible one, it is possible to determine the distance to them with high accuracy. This method was developed in the early 20th century by Einar Hertzschrung and Harlow Shelpie. Thanks to him, the Soviet astronomer Ernst Epik in 1922 determined the distance to Andromeda, which turned out to be an order of magnitude greater than the size of the Milky Way.

Edwin Hubble continued Epic's undertaking. By measuring the brightness of Cepheids in other galaxies, he measured their distance and compared it with the redshift in their spectra. So in 1929 he developed his famous law. His work definitively disproved the entrenched view that the Milky Way is the edge of the universe. It was now one of the many galaxies that had once considered it an integral part. Kant's hypothesis was confirmed almost two centuries after its development.

Subsequently, the connection between the distance of the galaxy from the observer and the speed of its removal from the observer, discovered by Hubble, made it possible to compile a complete picture of the large-scale structure of the Universe. It turned out that the galaxies were only a tiny part of it. They connected into clusters, clusters into superclusters. In turn, superclusters fold into the largest known structures in the universe - filaments and walls. These structures, adjacent to huge supervoids () and constitute a large-scale structure of the currently known universe.

Apparent infinity

From the foregoing, it follows that in just a few centuries, science has gradually fluttered from geocentrism to a modern understanding of the universe. However, this does not answer why we limit the universe today. After all, until now it was only about the scale of the cosmos, and not about its very nature.

The first who decided to justify the infinity of the universe was Isaac Newton. Revealing the law gravity, he believed that if space were finite, all her bodies would sooner or later merge into a single whole. Before him, if someone expressed the idea of ​​the infinity of the Universe, it was only in a philosophical key. Without any scientific justification. An example of this is Giordano Bruno. By the way, like Kant, he was ahead of science by many centuries. He was the first to declare that the stars are distant suns, and planets also revolve around them.

It would seem that the very fact of infinity is quite reasonable and obvious, but the turning points in science of the 20th century shook this “truth”.

Stationary Universe

The first significant step towards the development of a modern model of the universe was made by Albert Einstein. The famous physicist introduced his model of the stationary Universe in 1917. This model was based on the general theory of relativity, developed by him a year earlier. According to his model, the universe is infinite in time and finite in space. But after all, as noted earlier, according to Newton, a universe with a finite size must collapse. To do this, Einstein introduced the cosmological constant, which compensated for the gravitational attraction of distant objects.

No matter how paradoxical it may sound, Einstein did not limit the very finiteness of the Universe. In his opinion, the Universe is a closed shell of a hypersphere. An analogy is the surface of an ordinary three-dimensional sphere, for example, a globe or the Earth. No matter how much the traveler travels the Earth, he will never reach its edge. However, this does not mean that the Earth is infinite. The traveler will simply return to the place where he started his journey.

On the surface of the hypersphere

In the same way, a space wanderer, overcoming the Einstein Universe on a starship, can return back to Earth. Only this time the wanderer will move not on the two-dimensional surface of the sphere, but on the three-dimensional surface of the hypersphere. This means that the Universe has a finite volume, and hence a finite number of stars and mass. However, the universe does not have any boundaries or any center.

Einstein came to such conclusions by linking space, time and gravity in his famous theory. Before him, these concepts were considered separate, which is why the space of the Universe was purely Euclidean. Einstein proved that gravity itself is a curvature of space-time. This radically changed the early ideas about the nature of the universe, based on classical Newtonian mechanics and Euclidean geometry.

Expanding Universe

Even the discoverer of the "new universe" himself was not a stranger to delusions. Einstein, although he limited the universe in space, he continued to consider it static. According to his model, the universe was and remains eternal, and its size always remains the same. In 1922, the Soviet physicist Alexander Fridman significantly expanded this model. According to his calculations, the universe is not static at all. It can expand or contract over time. It is noteworthy that Friedman came to such a model based on the same theory of relativity. He managed to apply this theory more correctly, bypassing the cosmological constant.

Albert Einstein did not immediately accept such a "correction". To the aid of this new model came the previously mentioned discovery of Hubble. The recession of galaxies indisputably proved the fact of the expansion of the Universe. So Einstein had to admit his mistake. Now the Universe had a certain age, which strictly depends on the Hubble constant, which characterizes the rate of its expansion.

Further development of cosmology

As scientists tried to solve this problem, many other important components of the Universe were discovered and various models of it were developed. So in 1948, Georgy Gamow introduced the “hot universe” hypothesis, which would later turn into the big bang theory. The discovery in 1965 confirmed his suspicions. Now astronomers could observe the light that came from the moment when the universe became transparent.

Dark matter, predicted in 1932 by Fritz Zwicky, was confirmed in 1975. Dark matter actually explains the very existence of galaxies, galaxy clusters and the very structure of the Universe as a whole. So scientists learned that most of the mass of the universe is completely invisible.

Finally, in 1998, during the study of the distance to, it was discovered that the Universe is expanding with acceleration. This next turning point in science gave rise to modern understanding of the nature of the universe. Introduced by Einstein and refuted by Friedmann, the cosmological coefficient again found its place in the model of the Universe. The presence of a cosmological coefficient (cosmological constant) explains its accelerated expansion. To explain the presence of the cosmological constant, the concept was introduced - a hypothetical field containing most of the mass of the Universe.

The current idea of ​​the size of the observable universe

The current model of the Universe is also called the ΛCDM model. The letter "Λ" means the presence of the cosmological constant, which explains the accelerated expansion of the Universe. "CDM" means that the universe is filled with cold dark matter. Recent studies suggest that the Hubble constant is about 71 (km/s)/Mpc, which corresponds to the age of the Universe at 13.75 billion years. Knowing the age of the Universe, we can estimate the size of its observable region.

According to the theory of relativity, information about any object cannot reach the observer at a speed greater than the speed of light (299792458 m/s). It turns out that the observer sees not just an object, but its past. The farther the object is from it, the more distant past it looks. For example, looking at the Moon, we see the way it was a little more than a second ago, the Sun - more than eight minutes ago, the nearest stars - years, galaxies - millions of years ago, etc. In Einstein's stationary model, the Universe has no age limit, which means that its observable region is also not limited by anything. The observer, armed with more and more advanced astronomical instruments, will observe more and more distant and ancient objects.

We have a different picture with the modern model of the Universe. According to it, the Universe has an age, and hence the limit of observation. That is, since the birth of the Universe, no photon would have had time to travel a distance greater than 13.75 billion light years. It turns out that we can say that the observable Universe is limited from the observer by a spherical region with a radius of 13.75 billion light years. However, this is not quite true. Do not forget about the expansion of the space of the Universe. Until the photon reaches the observer, the object that emitted it will already be 45.7 billion light years away from us. years. This size is the particle horizon, and it is the boundary of the observable universe.

Over the horizon

So, the size of the observable universe is divided into two types. The apparent size, also called the Hubble radius (13.75 billion light years). And the real size, called the particle horizon (45.7 billion light years). It is important that both of these horizons do not at all characterize the real size of the Universe. First, they depend on the position of the observer in space. Second, they change over time. In the case of the ΛCDM model, the particle horizon expands at a rate greater than the Hubble horizon. The question of whether this trend will change in the future, modern science does not give an answer. But if we assume that the Universe continues to expand with acceleration, then all those objects that we see now will sooner or later disappear from our “field of vision”.

So far, the most distant light observed by astronomers is the CMB. Looking into it, scientists see the Universe as it was 380,000 years after the Big Bang. At that moment, the Universe cooled down so much that it was able to emit free photons, which are captured today with the help of radio telescopes. At that time, there were no stars or galaxies in the Universe, but only a continuous cloud of hydrogen, helium and a negligible amount of other elements. From the inhomogeneities observed in this cloud, galactic clusters will subsequently form. It turns out that it is precisely those objects that will form from the inhomogeneities of the cosmic microwave background radiation that are located closest to the particle horizon.

True Borders

Whether the universe has true, unobservable boundaries is still the subject of pseudoscientific speculation. One way or another, everyone converges on the infinity of the Universe, but they interpret this infinity in completely different ways. Some consider the Universe to be multidimensional, where our "local" three-dimensional Universe is just one of its layers. Others say that the Universe is fractal, which means that our local Universe may be a particle of another. Do not forget about the various models of the Multiverse with its closed, open, parallel Universes, wormholes. And many, many more different versions, the number of which is limited only by human imagination.

But if we turn on cold realism or simply move away from all these hypotheses, then we can assume that our Universe is an endless homogeneous container of all stars and galaxies. Moreover, at any very distant point, whether it be in billions of gigaparsecs from us, all the conditions will be exactly the same. At this point, the particle horizon and the Hubble sphere will be exactly the same with the same relict radiation at their edge. Around will be the same stars and galaxies. Interestingly, this does not contradict the expansion of the universe. After all, it is not just the Universe that is expanding, but its very space. The fact that at the moment of the big bang the Universe arose from one point only says that the infinitely small (practically zero) sizes that were then have now turned into unimaginably large ones. In the future, we will use this hypothesis in order to clearly understand the scale of the observable Universe.

Visual representation

Various sources provide all sorts of visual models that allow people to realize the scale of the universe. However, it is not enough for us to realize how vast the cosmos is. It is important to understand how such concepts as the Hubble horizon and the particle horizon actually manifest. To do this, let's imagine our model step by step.

Let's forget that modern science does not know about the "foreign" region of the Universe. Discarding the versions about the multiverses, the fractal Universe and its other "varieties", let's imagine that it is simply infinite. As noted earlier, this does not contradict the expansion of its space. Of course, we take into account the fact that its Hubble sphere and the sphere of particles are respectively 13.75 and 45.7 billion light years.

The scale of the universe

Press the START button and discover a new, unknown world!
To begin with, let's try to realize how large the Universal scales are. If you have traveled around our planet, you can well imagine how big the Earth is for us. Now imagine our planet as a grain of buckwheat, which moves in orbit around the watermelon-Sun, the size of half a football field. In this case, the orbit of Neptune will correspond to the size of a small city, the area - to the Moon, the area of ​​​​the boundary of the influence of the Sun - to Mars. It turns out that our solar system is as much larger than the Earth as Mars is larger than buckwheat! But this is only the beginning.

Now imagine that this buckwheat will be our system, the size of which is approximately equal to one parsec. Then the Milky Way will be the size of two football stadiums. However, this will not be enough for us. We will have to reduce the Milky Way to a centimeter size. It will somehow resemble coffee foam wrapped in a whirlpool in the middle of coffee-black intergalactic space. Twenty centimeters from it, there is the same spiral "baby" - the Andromeda Nebula. Around them will be a swarm of small galaxies in our Local Cluster. The apparent size of our universe will be 9.2 kilometers. We have come to understand the universal dimensions.

Inside the universal bubble

However, it is not enough for us to understand the scale itself. It is important to realize the Universe in dynamics. Imagine ourselves as giants, for whom the Milky Way has a centimeter diameter. As noted just now, we will find ourselves inside a ball with a radius of 4.57 and a diameter of 9.24 kilometers. Imagine that we are able to soar inside this ball, travel, overcoming whole megaparsecs in a second. What will we see if our universe is infinite?

Of course, before us will appear countless all kinds of galaxies. Elliptical, spiral, irregular. Some areas will be teeming with them, others will be empty. main feature will be that visually they will all be motionless, while we will be motionless. But as soon as we take a step, the galaxies themselves will begin to move. For example, if we are able to see the microscopic Solar System in the centimeter Milky Way, we can observe its development. Having moved away from our galaxy by 600 meters, we will see the protostar Sun and the protoplanetary disk at the time of formation. Approaching it, we will see how the Earth appears, life is born and man appears. In the same way, we will see how galaxies change and move as we move away from or approach them.

Consequently, the more distant galaxies we peer into, the more ancient they will be for us. So the most distant galaxies will be located further than 1300 meters from us, and at the turn of 1380 meters we will already see relic radiation. True, this distance will be imaginary for us. However, as we get closer to the CMB, we will see an interesting picture. Naturally, we will observe how galaxies will form and develop from the initial cloud of hydrogen. When we reach one of these formed galaxies, we will understand that we have overcome not 1.375 kilometers at all, but all 4.57.

Downscaling

As a result, we will increase even more in size. Now we can place entire voids and walls in the fist. So we will find ourselves in a rather small bubble from which it is impossible to get out. Not only will the distance to objects on the edge of the bubble increase as they approach, but the edge itself will move indefinitely. This is the whole point of the size of the observable universe.

No matter how big the Universe is, for the observer it will always remain limited bubble. The observer will always be at the center of this bubble, in fact he is its center. Trying to get to some object on the edge of the bubble, the observer will shift its center. As you approach the object, this object will move further and further away from the edge of the bubble and at the same time change. For example, from a shapeless hydrogen cloud, it will turn into a full-fledged galaxy or further a galactic cluster. In addition, the path to this object will increase as you approach it, as the surrounding space itself will change. When we get to this object, we will only move it from the edge of the bubble to its center. At the edge of the Universe, the relic radiation will also flicker.

If we assume that the Universe will continue to expand at an accelerated rate, then being in the center of the bubble and winding time into billions, trillions and even more high orders years ahead, we will notice an even more interesting picture. Although our bubble will also increase in size, its mutating components will move away from us even faster, leaving the edge of this bubble, until every particle of the Universe wanders apart in its lonely bubble without the ability to interact with other particles.

So, modern science does not have information about what the real dimensions of the universe are and whether it has boundaries. But we know for sure that the observable Universe has a visible and true boundary, called the Hubble radius (13.75 billion light years) and the particle radius (45.7 billion light years), respectively. These boundaries are completely dependent on the position of the observer in space and expand with time. If the Hubble radius expands strictly at the speed of light, then the expansion of the particle horizon is accelerated. The question of whether its particle horizon acceleration will continue further and change to contraction remains open.

Today we will talk about the fact that the Earth is small and the size of other huge celestial bodies in the Universe. What are the dimensions of the Earth compared to other planets and stars of the Universe.

In fact, our planet is very, very small ... compared to many other celestial bodies, and even compared to the same Sun, the Earth is a pea (a hundred times smaller in radius and 333 thousand times in mass), but there are stars in times, hundreds, thousands (!!) times larger than the Sun ... In general, we, people, and each of us especially, are microscopic traces of being in this Universe, atoms, invisible to the eyes of creatures that could live on huge stars(theoretically, and possibly practically).

Thoughts from the film on the topic: it seems to us that the Earth is big, it really is - for us, since we ourselves are small and our body mass is negligible compared to the scale of the Universe, some have never even been abroad and in most of their lives do not leave the limits of the house, the room, and they know almost nothing about the Universe. And the ants think that their anthill is huge, but we will step on the ant and not even notice it. If we had the power to reduce the Sun to the size of a leukocyte and reduce the Milky Way proportionally, then it would be equal to the scale of Russia. And there are thousands or even millions and billions of galaxies besides the Milky Way... This is in no way fit into the minds of people.

Every year, astronomers discover thousands (or more) of new stars, planets, and celestial bodies. Space is an unexplored area, and how many more galaxies, star, planetary systems will be discovered, and it is quite possible that there are many similar solar systems with theoretically existing life. We can judge the size of all celestial bodies only approximately, and the number of galaxies, systems, celestial bodies in the Universe is unknown. However, based on known data - the Earth is not the smallest object, but far from the largest, there are stars and planets hundreds, thousands of times larger !!

The largest object, that is, a celestial body, is not defined in the Universe, since human capabilities are limited, with the help of satellites, telescopes, we can see only a small part of the Universe, and we don’t know what is there, in the unknown distance and beyond the horizons ... perhaps even more celestial bodies than those discovered by humans.

So, within the solar system, the largest object is the Sun! Its radius is 1,392,000 km, followed by Jupiter - 139,822 km, Saturn - 116,464 km, Uranus - 50,724 km, Neptune - 49,244 km, Earth - 12,742.0 km, Venus - 12,103.6 km, Mars - 6780.0 km, etc.

Several dozen large objects - planets, satellites, stars and several hundred small ones, these are only from the open ones, but there are not open ones.

The Sun is larger than the Earth in radius - more than 100 times, in mass - 333 thousand times. Here are the scales.

The Earth is the 6th largest object in the solar system, very close to the scale of the Earth Venus, and Mars is half the size.

The Earth is generally a pea compared to the Sun. And all the other planets, smaller ones, are practically dust for the Sun ...

However, the Sun warms us regardless of its size and our planet. Did you know, did you imagine, walking on mortal soil with your feet, that our planet is almost a point in comparison with the Sun? And accordingly - we are on it - microscopic microorganisms ...

However, people have a lot of pressing problems, and sometimes there is no time to look beyond the ground under their feet.

Jupiter is over 10 times the size of Earth it is the fifth planet from the Sun (classified as a gas giant along with Saturn, Uranus, Neptune).

The Earth after the gas giants is the second largest object after the Sun in the solar system, then come the rest of the terrestrial planets, Mercury after the satellite of Saturn and Jupiter.

The terrestrial planets - Mercury, Earth, Venus, Mars - planets located in the inner region of the solar system.

Pluto is about one and a half times smaller than the Moon, today it is considered a dwarf planet, it is the tenth celestial body in the solar system after 8 planets and Eris (a dwarf planet, approximately similar in size to Pluto), consists of ice and stones, in area as South America, a small planet, however, it is also larger in scale compared to the Earth with the Sun, the Earth is still two times smaller in proportions.

For example, Ganymede is a satellite of Jupiter, Titan is a satellite of Saturn - only 1.5 thousand km less than Mars and more than Pluto and large dwarf planets. dwarf planets and satellites discovered recently - a lot, and even stars - even more so, more than a few million, or even billions.

There are several dozens of objects slightly smaller than the Earth and half smaller than the Earth in the solar system, and those that are slightly smaller - several hundred. Can you imagine how many fly around our planet? However, to say “flies around our planet” is incorrect, because as a rule, each planet has some relatively fixed place in the solar system.

And if some asteroid flies towards the Earth, then it is even possible to calculate its approximate trajectory, flight speed, time of approach to the Earth, and with the help of certain technologies, devices (like hitting an asteroid with the help of super-powerful atomic weapons in order to destroy part of the meteorite and how a consequence of a change in speed and flight path) change the direction of flight if the planet is in danger.

However, this is a theory, so far such measures have not been applied in practice, but cases of an unexpected fall of celestial bodies on Earth have been recorded - for example, in the case of the same Chelyabinsk meteorite.

In our minds, the Sun is a bright ball in the sky, in abstraction it is some kind of substance that we know about from satellite images, observations and experiments of scientists. However, all we see with our own eyes is a bright ball in the sky that disappears at night. If we compare the size of the Sun and the Earth, then it's about like a toy car and a huge jeep, the jeep will crush the car without even noticing. So is the Sun, if it had at least a little more aggressive characteristics and an unrealistic ability to move, it would swallow everything in its path, including the Earth. By the way, one of the theories of the death of the planet in the future says that the Sun will swallow the Earth.

We are accustomed, living in a limited world, to believe only what we see and take for granted only what is under our feet and perceive the Sun precisely as a ball in the sky that lives for us in order to light the way for mere mortals, to warm us, to give us energy, in general, we use the Sun to the fullest, and the thought that this bright Star carries a potential danger, seem ridiculous. And only a few people will seriously think that there are other galaxies in which there are celestial objects that are hundreds, and sometimes thousands of times larger than those in the solar system.

People simply cannot comprehend in their minds what the speed of light is, how celestial bodies move in the Universe, these are not formats of human consciousness…

We talked about the sizes of celestial bodies within the solar system, about the sizes of large planets, said that the Earth is the 6th largest object in the solar system and that the Earth is a hundred times smaller than the Sun (in diameter), and 333 thousand times in mass , however, there are celestial bodies in the Universe MUCH larger than the Sun. And if the comparison of the Sun and the Earth did not fit into the consciousness of mere mortals, then the fact that there are stars in comparison with which the Sun - a ball - even more so does not fit into us.

However, according to research scientists, it is. And this is a fact, based on the data obtained by astronomers. There are other star systems where the life of the planets exists like ours, the Sun. By "the life of the planets" is meant not earthly life with people or other beings, but the existence of planets in this system. So, to the question of life in space - every year, every day, scientists come to the conclusion that life on other planets is more and more possible, but this remains only an assumption. In the solar system, the only planet close in terms of conditions to the earth is Mars, but the planets of other star systems have not been studied in full.

For instance:

“It is believed that Earth-like planets are the most favorable for the emergence of life, so the search for them attracts close attention of the public. So in December 2005, scientists from the Space Science Institute (Pasadena, California) reported the discovery of a star similar to the Sun, around which rocky planets are presumably formed.

Subsequently, planets were discovered that are only a few times more massive than the Earth and should probably have a solid surface.

Super-Earths are an example of terrestrial-type exoplanets. As of June 2012, over 50 super-Earths have been found."

These super-earths are the potential carriers of life in the Universe. Although this is a question, since main criterion class of similar planets - the mass is more than 1 times the mass of the Earth, however, all discovered planets revolve around stars with less thermal radiation compared to the Sun, usually white, red and orange dwarfs.

The first super-Earth discovered in the habitable zone in 2007 is the planet Gliese 581 c near the star Gliese 581, the planet had a mass of about 5 Earth masses, “0.073 AU from its star. e. and is located in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "life zone" of the star Gliese 581. Later, a number of planets were discovered near this star and today they are referred to as a planetary system, the star itself has a low luminosity, several tens of times less than the Sun. It was one of the most sensational discoveries in astronomy.

But back to the topic of big stars.

Below are photos of the largest objects in the solar system and stars in comparison with the Sun, and then with the last star in the previous photo.

Mercury< Марс < Венера < Земля;

Land< Нептун < Уран < Сатурн < Юпитер;

Jupiter< < Солнце < Сириус;

Sirius< Поллукс < Арктур < Альдебаран;

Aldebaran< Ригель < Антарес < Бетельгейзе;

Betelgeuse< Мю Цефея < < VY Большого Пса

And in this list there are still the smallest stars and planets (the really largest star in this list, perhaps, is only the VY Canis Major star) .. The largest cannot even be compared with the Sun, because the Sun simply will not be visible.

The equatorial radius of the Sun, 695,700 km, is used as a unit for measuring the radius of a star.

For example, the star VV Cephei is 10 times larger than the Sun, and between the Sun and Jupiter, Wolf 359 (a single star in the constellation Leo, a faint red dwarf) is considered the largest star.

VV Cephei (not to be confused with the star of the same name with the "prefix" A) - "eclipsing double star like Algol in the constellation Cepheus, which is located at a distance of about 5000 light years from Earth. Component A is the seventh largest star known to science as of 2015 and the second largest star in the Milky Way Galaxy (after VY Canis Major).”

"Capella (α Aur / α Aurigae / Alpha Aurigae) is the brightest star in the constellation Auriga, the sixth brightest star in the sky and the third brightest star in the sky of the Northern Hemisphere."

The chapel is 12.2 times larger than the Sun in radius.

The polar star is 30 times larger than the Sun in radius. A star in the constellation Ursa Minor, located near the North Pole of the world, a supergiant of spectral type F7I.

Star Y Hounds of the Dogs is more than the Sun in (!!!) 300 times! (that is, about 3000 times larger than the Earth), a red giant in the constellation Canes Venatici, one of the coolest and reddest stars. And this is not the largest star.

For example, the star VV Cepheus A is larger than the Sun in radius by as much as 1050-1900 times! And the star is very interesting for its inconstancy and "leakage": “The luminosity is 275,000-575,000 times greater. The star fills the Roche lobe, and its matter flows to the neighboring companion. The speed of outflow of gases reaches 200 km/s. It has been established that the VV of Cepheus A is a physical variable pulsating with a period of 150 days.”

Of course, most of us will not understand information with scientific terms, if succinctly - a red-hot star, losing matter. Its size, strength, brightness of luminosity is simply impossible to imagine.

So, the 5 largest stars in the Universe (recognized as such from the currently known and discovered ones), in comparison with which our Sun is a pea and a speck of dust:

- VX Sagittarius - 1520 times the diameter of the Sun. A supergiant, hypergiant, variable star in the constellation Sagittarius is losing its mass due to the stellar wind.

- Westerland 1-26 - about 1530-2544 times the radius of the Sun. A red supergiant, or hypergiant, "located in the star cluster Westerland 1 in the constellation Altar".

- Star WOH G64 from the constellation Dorado, a red supergiant of spectral type M7.5, is located in the neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The distance to the solar system is approximately 163 thousand light years. years. More than the radius of the Sun by 1540 times.

- NML Cygnus (V1489 Cygnus) is 1183 - 2775 times larger than the Sun in radius, - "a star, a red hypergiant, is located in the constellation Cygnus."

- UY of the Shield is 1516 - 1900 times greater than the radius of the Sun. Currently the most big star in the Milky Way and in the universe.

“UY Scutum is a star (hypergiant) in the constellation Scutum. Located at a distance of 9500 St. years (2900 pc) from the Sun.

It is one of the largest and brightest known stars. According to scientists, the radius of the UY Shield is equal to 1708 radii of the Sun, the diameter is 2.4 billion km (15.9 AU). At the peak of pulsations, the radius can reach 2000 solar radii. The volume of a star is about 5 billion times the volume of the Sun."

From this list we can see that there are about a hundred (90) stars much larger than the Sun (!!!). And there are such stars, on the scale of which the Sun is a grain, and the Earth is not even dust, but an atom.

The point is that places in this list distributed according to the principle of accuracy in determining parameters, mass, there are approximately larger stars than UY Scutum, but their sizes and other parameters have not been established for certain, however, the parameters of this star may one day become questionable. It is clear that stars 1000-2000 times larger than the Sun exist.

And, perhaps, there are or are forming planetary systems near some, and who will give guarantees that there cannot be life there ... or not now? Wasn't there or never will be? No one… We know too little about the Universe and the Cosmos.

Yes, and even from the stars shown in the pictures - the latest star - VY Canis Majoris has a radius equal to 1420 solar radii, but the UY Shield star at the peak of the pulsation is about 2000 solar radii, and there are stars presumably more than 2.5 thousand solar radii. Such scales cannot be imagined, these are truly extraterrestrial formats.

Of course, the question is interesting - look at the very first picture in the article and at latest photos, where there are many, many stars - how does such a number of celestial bodies coexist in the Universe quite calmly? There are no explosions, collisions of these same supergiants, because the sky, from what is visible to us, is teeming with stars ... In fact, this is just the conclusion of mere mortals who do not understand the scale of the Universe - we see a distorted picture, but in fact there is enough space for everyone , and, perhaps, there are explosions and collisions, it just does not lead to the death of the Universe and even part of the galaxies, because the distance from star to star is huge.