Our Majestic Universe

Originally written for a devotional in school in the spring of 2012

The Size of God’s Universe

Here are a few interesting facts regarding the size of the universe.
The circumference of the Earth is 24,900 mi. at the equator. At the speed of 200 mph, it would take over five days to circle the earth. A rocket travels at about 20,000 mph. (That is about ten times the speed of a rifle bullet traveling at 3,000 ft. per sec.) At ground level, a rocket can orbit the earth at the equator in a little over 1 hr.
The moon is 239,000 miles away from Earth. It would take a rocket less than 12 hrs. to get to the moon.
The Sun is 93,000,000 mi. from Earth. At 200 mph, it would take 160 yr. to travel to the sun; and it would take a rocket 194 days.
A lightyear is how far light can travel in a vacuum in one year, which is 5.88 trillion miles. (That is 16 Billion miles a day, and 186,500 miles in one second.) It takes light 8 minutes to reach Earth from the sun. It would take 33,540 years for a rocket to travel a lightyear. (5.88 trillion [5,880,000,000,000] is 5.88 million millions.)
In 1977, a self-subsistent space probe named “Voyager 1” was launched into space, with the intent of going as far as possible. This rocket travels at 38,000 mph. As of 2020, it has traveled over 14 billion miles. At that speed, it would take nearly 74,000 years for it to reach Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to Earth other than the sun and is 4.2 lightyears away.
Earth is in the Milky Way, which is a large group of stars called a galaxy. (There may be up to two trillion galaxies in the observable universe.) The Milky Way is 100,000 light-years across. If a model were to be made of the Milky Way to the same scale as a standard schoolroom globe, it would be 14,000,000 miles wide.
Galaxies tend to be grouped into clusters. The Milky Way is part of a cluster known as the Local Group. This cluster measures about 10 million light-years in diameter and includes two other giant spirals and about 40 small galaxies called dwarf galaxies.
Nearly all the other large galaxies within about 40 million to 50 million light-years of the sun belong to groups that contain from 20 to 100 galaxies. The Virgo Cluster ranks as the nearest cluster of galaxies. It lies about 55 million light-years away and consists of about 2,500 galaxies.
The Local Group, the Virgo Cluster, and dozens of other nearby groups and clusters together form the Local Supercluster. This structure measures about 200 million light-years in diameter and contains tens of thousands of galaxies. Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, or the Great GRB Wall, is a mega-supercluster that astronomers first reported in 2013. According to Wikipedia, The Great GRB Wall measures about 10 billion light-years long, 7.2 billion light-years wide, and almost 1 billion light-years thick. It contains billions of galaxies.
Superclusters form parts of vast fiber-like structures where galaxies are typically found. Nearly empty regions, ranging from 30 to 300 million light-years across, span the volume between these fibers.
(As Christians, that believe in creation and the young Earth, we have no good reason to believe the secular astronomers are stretching these numbers; for the methods they use to get these measurements allow for little varients.)
The estimated diameter of the observable universe is about 93 billion light-years, or about 550,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000 (sextillion) miles.
The surface area of the observable universe is over 27,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (sextillion) sq. light-years. (That is 27 billion x 1 million x 1 million.) or nearly 950,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (quindecillion) sq. mi. A model of the known universe to the scale of a standard schoolroom globe would be 2.2 light-years in diameter.
Remember, except for the Earth, God created the entire universe on the 4th day.

The size of Stars

The Sun has a diameter of 865,400 mi. At 200 mph, it would take 1 ½ yr. to travel around it. At 20,000 mph, it would take a rocket over 5 ½ days to orbit it at its surface. A globe of the sun to the scale of a standard globe of our Earth would be 109 feet in diameter.
Hot gases from the sun flash 300,000 mi. into space, which is more than the distance between the Earth and the moon.)
Astronomers classify the sun as a dwarf because other kinds of stars are much larger. Supergiant stars have 8 to 120 times the mass of the sun.
VY Canis Majoris, a hypergiant star, is commonly accepted as the largest star. (It is between 3,900 and 5,000 light-years from Earth.) VY Canis Majoris is so big that if it were the Sun in our solar system its surface would extend between Jupiter’s and Saturn’s orbits. It is 1,420 bigger than the sun and has a diameter of 1.2 billion miles. Again, if a globe were made of VY Canis Majoris to the scale of a standard globe of our Earth, it would be 28.7 miles in diameter. This hypergiant star is about 300,000 times brighter than our sun.
Although VY Canis Majoris is the biggest star, it is not the heaviest and brightest. R136a1, the most luminous star we know of, is around 8,710,000 times brighter than the sun, and in four seconds, it radiates more energy than the Sun does in a year. If it replaced Proxima Centauri, at the distance of 4.2 light-years from Earth, it would look about the same size and as the full moon.
Less than 1% of the stars in our galaxy are considered supergiants; even so, astronomers estimate that there are about 1 billion supergiant stars in the Milky Way.

God created this universe by simple commands, and now He is standing in supreme control of its entire extent. It is not at our place to question His action or balk at His decisions. Instead, we should calmly accept His will for us and our planet, and rest assured that nothing is going to happen that God did not allow, even though we don’t always understand.
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. (Psalms 33:6-9)

“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.” (Genesis 1:14-19)

Ps. While I was punching numbers, I decided to see what big numbers I could come up with. The volume of the observable universe is 420,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (undecillion) cubic light-years, or 87,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (tresvigintillion) cubic miles. The volume of the observable universe in milliliters is 3.6e+92 (move the decimal 92 places). The name of that number is 362 trigintillion. (“tri” stands for 3, and “trigin” stands for 30, [there are 30 groups of three zeros].) I invite you to write that number out for yourself if you want to see it.

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