22 Pictures That Will Make You Question Your Entire Existence

Contents show

1. This is the Earth – where every single human has ever lived.

This is the Earth! This is where you live.

2. And this is our local neighborhood, the solar system.

And this is where you live in your neighborhood, the solar system.

3. Here’s the distance, to scale, between the Earth and the moon. It looks far, but is it?

Here's the distance, to scale, between the Earth and the moon. Doesn't look too far, does it?

4. Nope. You can just about fit every planet in our solar system within that distance.

THINK AGAIN. Inside that distance you can fit every planet in our solar system, nice and neatly.

5. But some of these planets are very large indeed. That green speck you see? That’s what North America would look like on Jupiter.

But let's talk about planets. That little green smudge is North America on Jupiter.

6. And here’s how the Earth fares next to Saturn. Not very big at all, right?

And here's the size of Earth (well, six Earths) compared with Saturn:

7. Here’s a fun fact: if Earth had Saturn’s rings, the view from our soil would look like this:

And just for good measure, here's what Saturn's rings would look like if they were around Earth:

8. And to make things even more interesting, here’s what a comet would look like on top of Los Angeles:

This right here is a comet. We just landed a probe on one of those bad boys. Here's what one looks like compared with Los Angeles:

9. But that’s still nothing considering how small we are compared to our sun:

Let's step back a bit. Here's the size of Earth compared with the size of our sun. Terrifying, right?

10. To drive that point home, here’s another comparison:

But that's nothing compared to our sun. Just remember:

11. Here what our planet looks like from the moon:

Here's you from the moon:

12. From Mars:

Here's you from Mars:

13. And from behind Saturn’s rings:

Here's you from just behind Saturn's rings:

14. This is the earth beyond Neptune, 4 billion miles away. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, “Everyone and everything you have ever known exists on that little speck”.

And here's you from just beyond Neptune, 4 billion miles away.

15. Carl Sagan once once famously said that there are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth:

But that's nothing. Again, as Carl once mused, there are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth:

16. Which means that there are ones much, much bigger than what would be our relatively tiny sun. I mean, just look at it:

Which means that there are ones much, much bigger than little wimpy sun. Just look at how tiny and insignificant our sun is:

17. But even that was nothing. The biggest star, VY Canis Majoris, is 1,000,000,000 times bigger than our sun:

26 Pictures Will Make You Re-Evaluate Your Entire Existence

18. But none of those come anywhere close to the size of a galaxy. If you reduced the size of our sun to that of a white blood cell, and then reduced the size of the Milky Way galaxy using the same scale, the Milky Way would be the size of the United States:

But none of those compares to the size of a galaxy. In fact, if you shrank the sun down to the size of a white blood cell and shrunk the Milky Way galaxy down using the same scale, the Milky Way would be the size of the United States:

19. But even our unimaginably massive galaxy is TINY compared with some other much larger galaxies. Here’s the Milky Way compared to IC 1011, 350 million light years away from Earth:

But even our galaxy is a little runt compared with some others. Here's the Milky Way compared to IC 1011, 350 million light years away from Earth:

20. But it gets even better. This picture taken by the Hubble telescope reveals that there are THOUSANDS of galaxies, each containing MILLIONS of stars, each with their own planets.

But let's think bigger. In JUST this picture taken by the Hubble telescope, there are thousands and thousands of galaxies, each containing millions of stars, each with their own planets.

21. This is UDF 423, a galaxy which is 10 BILLION light years away. That means this image, even when viewed in a telescope ‘now’, right here on earth, is actually 10 billion light years old. Try to wrap your head around that one.

Here's one of the galaxies pictured, UDF 423. This galaxy is 10 BILLION light years away. When you look at this picture, you are looking billions of years into the past.

22. But you should also know that all of this is just a fraction of the universe.

And just keep this in mind — that's a picture of a very small, small part of the universe. It's just an insignificant fraction of the night sky.

So to put this all in perspective, let’s look at earth, and then start to zoom out…

This is your home.

Our Solar system…

This is what happens when you zoom out from your home to your solar system.

I am prepared…

And this is what happens when you zoom out farther...

Oh boy…

And farther...

Arghh…

Keep going...

*starts getting dizzy*…

Just a little bit farther...

*almost fainting*…

Almost there...

Woah. There it is. The entire observable universe as we know it.

And here it is. Here's everything in the observable universe, and here's your place in it. Just a tiny little ant in a giant jar.

Mind = Blown.