Random thoughts. Not related to ESO

ImaginaryDimension

I'm not sure if "off topic" stuff is actually allowed here since we don't have a general discussion section but I just wanted to share something here to see what people think.

I was waiting in group to run a dungeon and they were taking a while so I just put my feet up and was looking out the window, a bright star caught my eye and I started to think to myself... "I wonder how far away that star is."

I've been interested in Cosmology ever since I was a young kid and when you think about this stuff, it just cripples the human mind. Consider this;

The speed of light is 186,000miles per second, it can travel around the Earth 7 times is just 1 second, that's pretty damn fast right? Now consider this, it takes light 8 whole minutes to travel from the sun to our Earth, 8 minutes @ 186,000 miles every second?! Pretty nuts but let's take it one further.

The next closest star to our own is 4.2 light years away. 4.2 years @ 186,000 miles every second, now that must be freaking far... but how far in miles you might ask? ~24.7trillion miles. Already we have a problem. We have barely even left our own doorstep and already we're encountering huge numbers that our brains just cannot comprehend.

But we can go one further It would take light 100,000 years to cross from one side of the milkyway to the other. 100,000 years @ 186,000miles per second, every second, non-stop. The number of miles this would be is not even worth writing because the number would be meaningless in any capacity.

Now the scariest part about this is that our milkyway, given that we know it would take light 100,000 years to cross it is still only 1/1,824,000th the size of the observable universe.

I think this will be locked by mods because it isn't about ESO, but I still wanted to give people an opportunity to read it if they wanted to, while waiting for a group or something

I think we need a new word to describe the size of the universe, because none of the words we have suffice. A new word should be created and reserved purely for describing the size of the universe. Happy gaming guys!

ZOS_TristanK

While we are happy to ponder our finitude in the great infinitude, we are closing this thread as it is unrelated to The Elder Scrolls Online. Please make sure all topics and conversations are related to ESO in the future.