What would you call the biggest thing in the universe? If you said the universe; or space then you are correct! But what do we know about our universe? Today I hope to expand your knowledge of the universe, galaxies, the solar system and what most people think of as the most confusing things in the universe. Anyway, let’s start small. Well… smallest.
The smallest measurement we know right now is a planck. It is said to be the ‘smallest measurement that makes sense’ and also how small the ‘strings’ are in string theory. It is 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001 m (10-35m). It is really quite impossible to put that into perspective! Now let’s tackle the biggest thing we know in the universe. That isn’t the universe. The winner is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall (Her-CrB GW). 10 Billion light years across (meaning it would take 10 billion years at the speed of light to get from one end to the other)! Here is a link to a cool video about it: click here for it! As a size comparison. Our galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy, is 100 thousand light years across. Our galaxy is tiny when compared with some other galaxies and superclusters.
Now let’s talk about our solar system. First of all, the solar system doesn’t end at Neptune and Pluto, and no, this isn’t a weird theory of the real 9th planet (sorry pluto). This is talking about the Oort cloud. You’re probably like “What’s the Oort cloud?” right now, so I’ll show you. Just click on me! Anyway, the Oort cloud is pretty much all the leftover building blocks of our solar system’s planets, really far away from our sun. But a fun fact about the Oort cloud is that we have way too much of it. It has way too much left over matter just slowly orbiting in a MASSIVE sphere.
A theory suggests our sun was a thief to it’s younger star siblings! Another theory suggests that we have to much in our Oort cloud because of our gas giants (mainly Jupiter) slingshotted them away when they tried (and failed) to orbit the gas giants.
