Exercise For The Mind

[roadwarrior]

This is from the Nova Series, The Beginning and End of Time:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/origins/univ-flash.html

[Jake.]

Cool, but I think I will be dead in ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trilion years.  :-/

[michbass]

Interesting read. Lots of interesting stuff on the origins link on the bottom.

[HUNTER19]

Its amazing the information thats you can get of the internet

[roadwarrior]

Cool, but I think I will be dead in ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trilion years. :-/

How do they come up with this stuff?

These numbers have no meaning, they are impossible to comprehend.

As a rough calculation, there have been 733,422 DAYs from Year 0 to now.

[Guest avid]

How cool is that?

All speculation of course, but totally cool nonetheless.

[Panamoka_Bassin]

Cool, but I think I will be dead in ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trilion years. :-/

How do they come up with this stuff?

These numbers have no meaning, they are impossible to comprehend.

As a rough calculation, there have been 733,422 DAYs from Year 0 to now.

RW, what do you consider Year 0? If you're talking about 2007 years ago, that's just silly talk. We know that the world has been in existance for much longer than that, and the church will agree to this (as I am guessing this is where you're coming from with that date...). That's just the base year for the Roman Catholic Church to start counting their time. By their own admission, they believe the earth was created over 5000 years ago (I'm not sure which year it is on the Hebrew calender), so we're talking about another 1.25 million days to add to your calculation. Not trying to call you out, or anything like that, but just trying to put things into perspective...

[roadwarrior]

To clarify: NOT the very beginning, but the Year 0 as in 2,008 years ago.

So, 365.25 days x 2,008 years = 733,422 days

By my calculations, 1 million days is 2737.85 years. Think of that in terms of "trillion YEAR" segments as used in the article. A trillion = 1000 X 1 billion;

1 billion = 1000 X 1 million.

I guess my point is, just 1 million days is quite awhile in human terms. When you then consider millions of years, you stretch the imagination. Then billions, then trillions...Multiplying by trillions and then trillions again, the numbers are meaningless to mere mortals!

[Tokyo Tony]

Man, I love astronomy.  It's fascinating, even though we're really incapable of actually comprehending the numbers involved.  

A couple thoughts that always blow my mind: what was there before the big bang?  Nothing?  What does that even mean?

The concept of a light year: the distance light travels in one year, and light travels at 186,000 km/sec (I think?).  Then astronomers/physicists talk about stars and galaxies that are in the billions of light years from Earth.  How freakin' crazy is that?  Those numbers are ridiculous.

There are billions of stars within our galaxy, the sun is just one of them.  There are billions of galaxies in the universe.  To think that intelligent life does not exist elsewhere in the universe is crazy.  It's just a matter of when.  If light takes billions of years to get to us, we may be able to detect intelligent life, but that would have been billions of years ago.  Now that galaxy/star/planet might not even exist anymore.

Craziness

[frogtog]

PB you ought to knowed better that to come up with that many years. Time

started with the year number 1  ;D I don't even see much in the books about year #1

[roadwarrior]

PB you ought to knowed better that to come up with that many years. Time

started with the year number 1 ;D I don't even see much in the books about year #1

Hmm...

After thinking about it a moment, you have to be right.

You couldn't know about a zero year until you have #1.  

[Panamoka_Bassin]

Now that's deep...  I guess that's why everyone was wrong when they thought the new millenium began 1/01/2000 instead of a year later when it actually began. (Think about it, there is/was no year zero).

If you guys have a telescope or even binoculars, here's a great little sight to look for.  Just spend some time looking at Orion's "sword" (the 3 stars that hang down from his "belt").  The top star is a star, but the lower 2 consist of a binary star in the middle and a nebula at the bottom.  A decent pair of binoculars will show these pretty easily and it may just be me, but I think it's pretty cool to be able to se that stuff at all.

Remember what the guy on TV says: "Keep Looking Up!"