this is Earth this is where you live and this is where you live in your neighborhood the solar system [Applause] here's the distance between the Earth and the moon doesn't look too far does it think again at their farthest point the earth and the moon are two hundred and fifty two thousand eighty eight miles away inside that distance you could fit every planet in our entire solar system but let's talk about planets the Great Red Spot on Jupiter that's about two times as big as Earth and Saturn is about nine times wider than Earth Saturn's
rings are so large that a few of the fragments within them are as large as mountains but that's nothing compared to our Sun just remember this is Earth and this is Earth from the moon this is Earth from Mars here's Earth from just behind Saturn's rings and here's Earth from just beyond Neptune four billion miles away but a billion is a big number so let's put that in perspective one million seconds equals about eleven and a half days whereas 1 billion seconds equals over 31 years let's step back a bit here's the size of Earth
compared with the size of our Sun terrifying right and here's that exact same Sun from the surface of Mars as Carl Sagan once mused the total number of stars in the universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth and there are some stars out there that are much much bigger than our little wimpy Sun the biggest star we know of V Y Canis Majoris is about 2,000 times the diameter of our Sun but none of those compares to the size of a galaxy in fact if you
shrink the size of our solar system down to the size of a quarter and tranq the Milky Way galaxy down using the same scale the diameter of the Milky Way will be roughly the size of the United States that's because the Milky Way galaxy is huge it's diameters about 100,000 light-years wide which when converted to miles is about 621 quadrillion 371 trillion 192 billion 237 million three hundred thirty three thousand eight hundred ninety miles inside of all that is you you live in this tiny tiny portion of the Milky Way but even still our galaxy
is a little runt compared with some others NGC 674 for a spiral galaxy similar to our own is twice as wide as the Milky Way stretching over two hundred thousand light-years across it is a massive but let's think bigger in this picture alone taken by the Hubble telescope there are thousands and thousands of galaxies each containing millions or billions of stars with their own planets some of the objects seen here may have formed as many as 11 billion years ago just three billion years after the Big Bang [Music] this period of time is considered one
of the busiest star-forming periods and just keep this in mind that's a picture of a very small small part of the universe so if you ever feeling upset about your favorite show being canceled or the fact that they play Christmas music way too early just remember this is your home earth [Applause] [Music]
