Introvert

Powers of 10

The first time I saw this animation in book form, it had a profound effect on me. The size and scope of the universe — from macrocosmic to subatomic is inherently incomprehensible even to an introvert’s imagination.

One clear winter night I was returning home from a meeting and pulled off to stretch the kinks out. I chose to pull off at Enid Lake Dam. Driving out on the dam, it was cold and very, very dark.

When I got out and looked up I was awe-struck. With no light pollution the sky was full of all different colors and sizes. The Milky Way stretched like a river through the sky.

The amazing thing is that, according to my reading, on such a night you see only about 2,700 stars. The Milky Way contains 100,000 million stars. And according to this article, the total number of stars in the universe is 70 Sextillion stars (70,000 million, million, million).

This mind numbing information has led to a coupe of articles over at my other site — I’m gonna keep on lookin’ — here and here.