Theory Some Time or Size Scales to Render the Dimensions of the Universe!

A Size Scale to Understand the Universe

A Time Scale to Understand the Universe

A Size Scale to Understand the Universe

The dimensions of the Universe are tremendous! The following scale, in terms of dimensions, is useful to grasp those magnitudes of distances!

click to a scale-figuration of the Universe in terms of dimensions, based on the representation of the distance Sun-Proxima Centauri by the point on a 'i'. The Universe is figured against the background of the eastern U.S.A

• let's assume that the mean distance which, in our Milky-Way Galaxy, is separating two stars -5 light-years that is- be figured, on that page, by the point on this 'i' (or about one pixel). This, further, is true too to figure, so, the distance separating our Sun from our nearest neighbour-star, Proxima Centauri, the fist star we would meet on a journey through the Galaxy
• at such a scale, our Milky-Way Galaxy would be 23-ft (7-meter) wide, about barely less than three stores of an average habitation-building, or the distance separating your home from your neighbour's! That span of width would thus be entirely darken by points, or pixels. The Milky-Way Galaxy has a width of about 130,000 light-years)
• both the Magellanic Clouds, which are the satellites of the Galaxy, are distant from us by about that same value, about 33 ft (10 meters; about 190,000 light-years; or the next neighbour)
• the Andromeda Galaxy, the sister to our own Milky-Way Galaxy, is now about 330 ft from us (a hundred meters, or 2 millions light-years; or a portion of the street in front of the house)
• the 'Local Group', that cluster which gathers the Galaxy and some others -of which the Andromeda Galaxy- is, with its 10 million light-years in width, of a size of somewhat more than one-third of a mile (500 meters). Or the street itself
• the 'supercluster', which links our cluster of galaxies to some set of other clusters had a dimension of 100 million light-years. It's thus about 3,2 miles (5.2 kilomters) from us, about the habitation area next to yours
• the location where, as seen from your home, the Universe's acceleration seems to accelerate due to the dark energy, is 226 miles away! (364 km. 7 billion light-years. About the distance to reach the next capital-city)
• the whole of the Universe, at last -twice a radius of 13.7 billion light-years- is worth 930-mile wide (1,500 kilometers, about a continent the size of Europe, or the eastern U.S.A. The distance between New York and St. Louis, more precisely). All that distance -and volume- is filled with the filaments of hydrogen of the Universe and the vast voids between as, where the filaments converge, objects of the size of clusters or super-clusters of galaxies are to be found!

A Time Scale to Understand the Universe

The Universe's age is now well established at 13.7 billion years. Would the Universe have been born today at 0:00 a.m., the Universe whole history would have unfolded this way -as seen from tonight at midnight:

• some time before 3 seconds after 12:00 a.m.: the atoms' nuclei capture the electrons, as the Universe becomes transparent
• 0:21:40 a.m.: first stars appear
• 1:45 a.m.: the proto-galaxies appear
• 2:06 a.m.: the Dark Ages end as the ultraviolet emanating from the first objects in the Universe completely re-ionized the neutral hydrogen
• 6:30 a.m.: our own Milky Way Galaxy has been born
• 12:15 p.m.: the dark energy beginning to accelerate the Universe's expansion
• 3:55 p.m.: the Sun and the solar system have been born
• 7:51 p.m.: the life appears on Earth
• 7 minute before midnight: dinosaurs' extinction
• 45 second before midnight: manking appearing
• 3 second before midnight: Homo sapiens appearing
• the whole history of manking since the Neolithics is contained in the last 8 hundreths of a second before midnight