Scientific facts that blow my mind

[Jaxcat]

I'm assuming Google is correct on these:

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to contain between 100 and 400 Billion stars and is 100k light years across. So, traveling at the speed of light, it would take you 100k years to cross our galaxy.

The closest galaxy to ours, Andromeda, is 2.5 Million light years away and may contain as many as 1 Trillion stars. So the light from Andromda thst astronomers can see with extremely powerful telescopes originated approximately 2.5 million years ago.

And there is no way Andromeda is the only other galaxy in the universe, imo.

I cannot fathom how enormous the universe actually is. Nor can I believe that our little bundle of humanity is the only intelligent life in the galaxy, much less the universe. And, as much as I like Star Trek and Star Wars, traveling at warp speed (the speed of light) wouldn't allow humans to explore but a very small portion of the Milky Way, much less anything else.

[blueheretic]

worm holes are the key

[The-Hack]

There are billions of galaxies
in the Universe, though most are smaller than Andomeda and the Milky Way.

Until the 20th Century, observers thought that Anromeda and other “smudges” visible through earlier telescopes were contained within our Galaxy. Then with better telescopes, and well reasoned thought, they realized our galaxy, which we view from the edge, is only one of billions.

Andromeda is in a collision course
with the Milkyway, as their combined gravity is drawing them together. This will occur in a few more million years, and likely presents no threat to earth, as in the outer edge, where stars have tillions of miles separation, a collision is highly unlikely.

[Jaxcat]

Andromeda is in a collision course with the Milkyway

In the same way UofL is on a collision course with a national championship and the only variable is time? I'd guess 'a few million years' is about right for them, also.

[South jones]

Get outside of the universe and try to wrap your mind around infinity.
no beginning, no end.
There could be trillions and trillions and trillions of universes plus trillions and...............

[Helix]

As it happens, I worked with astroengineers in my former professional life (not as an engineer, but that's a story for another day).

We're living in a golden age of exoplanetology, the study of worlds orbiting other stars. Through methods such as planetary transits, we can measure light dips when another body passes in front of its host star. Until about 30 years ago, we did not know of another planet in any other star system. This contemporary technique and others have turned up thousands upon thousands of candidate exoplanets, of which hundreds, if not more, have been verified through follow up studies with terrestrial scopes and space-based scopes such as the James Webb Telescope, which is simply a stupendous engineering achievement. Seriously, look it up. The James Web hangs out at a gravitationally neutral place called Lagrange 2, well beyond the moon in a place where Earth can partially shield it from our star's glare. Anyway, we're closer than ever at being able to visually assess worlds that are in the so-called habitable zone of their parent stars, which means water, the universal catalyst, may be present on those planetary surfaces.

Closer to home, we know from the Saturn orbiter Cassini that Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, is releasing organics, including water ice, into space. We know because we've both observed this using Cassini, and driven it RIGHT THROUGH THOSE GEYSERS in daring passes. Because of its proximity, Saturn literally squeezes that moon, kneading it in a process not unlike how our moon influences the tides on Earth. This means that whatever undersea Ocean is responsible for those guysers may also be relatively warm. Interesting, huh? Cassini also dispatched a small lander called Huygens, which recorded its descent through Titan's clouds and still sits on that body's surface, long since dead. We know from Cassinni that Titan is the only moon in our system with an active hydrology, only this one is composed of liquid methane, not H2O. At the end of its mission, Cassini was flown into the crushing depths of Saturn taking measurements until it could no longer communicate.

Anyway, I'm a space nerd and I need to stop.

Oh, and Kentucky has orbited satellites. Ask me how.

[Catsrock]

IU won the national championship with a bunch of 3 star players and a 2 star QB. Some things you just can’t wrap your brain around. Hehe