Space is Pretty Big

Impressive... but does not really affect our life.

Actually, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy says it in its introduction.

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen ...". So, there.

The bombastic claim

"The large galaxy pictured here contains 8 times as many stars as our own Milky Way Galaxy. It is so large, it technically shouldn't exist"

has a much saner description here:

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2005/28/fu...

It appears to be "too young" according to the expectations of those used to look at the "closer" things.

So not that impressive, compared to what had to happen before: According to our current knowledge, the whole universe must have grown up 10 to 78 th power times in volume (!) in only 10 to -32 th of second (!), so I'm not that impressed that there existed some big galaxy somewhere the whole 800 million years after the inflationary period! Why not?

The Total Perspective Vortex is allegedly the most horrible torture device to which a sentient being can be subjected. When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker%27...