Science
Related: About this forumFrom 2018: What Is the Biggest Thing in the Universe?
By Elizabeth Howell
January 19, 2018
Scientists have created the first map of a colossal supercluster of galaxies known as Laniakea, the home of Earth's Milky Way galaxy and many other. This computer simulation, a still from a Nature journal video, depicts the giant supercluster, with the Milky Way's location shown as a red dot. (Image credit: Nature Video)
In space, we're used to dealing with large distances and objects. In the cosmic scheme of things, Earth is small. Even in our solar system, we are easily dwarfed by the planet Jupiter (more than 1,000 Earths would fit in the planet, according to NASA) and our sun (more than a million Earths would fit in there, according to Cornell University).
Even our sun looks puny when it is compared to the biggest stars we know of. The sun is a G-type star, a yellow dwarf pretty average sized on the cosmic scale. But some "hypergiant" stars are much, much larger. Perhaps the biggest star known is UY Scuti, which could fit more than 1,700 of our suns. (Note that the margin of error is roughly 192 sun-widths, so at the lower end of the margin UY Scuti would move several ranks down the list of the biggest stars.) UY Scuti is only about 30 times more massive than our sun, however, so that shows that mass and size don't necessarily correlate in space.
Progressing up the list of big cosmic objects, other things to consider are black holes and, in particular, supermassive black holes that typically reside in the center of a galaxy. (Our Milky Way hosts one that is about 4 million times the mass of the sun.) One of the biggest supermassive black holes ever found resides in NGC 4889, which has a black hole roughly 21 billion times the mass of the sun.
There are things out there bigger than even supermassive black holes. Galaxies are collections of star systems and everything that is inside those systems (such as planets, stars, asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, gas, dust and more). Our own Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across, NASA says; a light-year is the distance light travels in a year. It's difficult to characterize what the largest galaxies are, because they don't really have precise boundaries, but the largest galaxies we know of are millions of light-years across. The biggest known galaxy is IC 1101, which is 50 times the Milky Way's size and about 2,000 times more massive. It is about 5.5 million light-years across. Nebulas, or vast clouds of gas, also have impressively large sizes. NGC 604 in the Triangulum Galaxy is commonly cited as one of the largest; it's roughly 1,520 light-years across.
More:
https://www.space.com/33553-biggest-thing-universe.html
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)Ty!
HUAJIAO
(2,383 posts)lucca18
(1,241 posts)spike jones
(1,678 posts)It is not the same thing. Asking for a friend.
Rabrrrrrr
(58,347 posts)So, speaking purely volume-wise, the Sun is 1.3 million times larger than the earth.
Speaking in terms of how many spheres the size of the earth could fit into the sun, it will be about 960,000, since the spheres come with a lot of wasted volume.
In terms of mass, the sun is about 340,000 times larger than the earth.
In terms of diameter, the sun is 109 times larger than the earth.
So it all depends on what people are actually talking about, and they rarely specific, which can be annoying - even your question leaves room for interpretation.
spike jones
(1,678 posts)Rabrrrrrr
(58,347 posts)And people who can't handle intelligent questions and curiosity don't deserve to folks like us for friends.
Moebym
(989 posts)Since we don't know just how large the universe is, of which the observable universe is just a fragment.
LudwigPastorius
(9,131 posts)The unobservable universe is estimated to be 15 million times larger than the part we can see.
...and we can see about 2 trillion galaxies.
Pepsidog
(6,254 posts)dchill
(38,468 posts)Remo Williams - The Adventure Begins.
Equomba
(197 posts)Regarding very large numbers, I recently ran across an example, told in story form, about just how large VERY LARGE numbers can be. And they use what for most is a totally relatable 'experience' as the base.
Totally blew me away, fried what's left of my brain. I'm going to post this soon so no spoilers, just not sure which forum it belongs in.
Thanks again for the post!