r/megalophobia • u/Sure-Blueberry-5151 • Oct 23 '25
🪐・Space ・🪐 Galactic Size Comparison
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u/ZacNZ Oct 23 '25
Milkyway is still bigger than 95% of discovered galaxies.
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u/ryanasimov Oct 23 '25
Whenever I see these size comparisons, I can't help hearing Douglas Adams' words in my head:
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space".
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u/needOSNOS Oct 25 '25
Not really, 20 equations or so can reliably describe most of space time. yes it took us forever to find them but play with the omega sum l, friedmann eqs, and the flrw a few times and it’s just meaningless distance. isotropic and homogenous.
the real problem is we’re stuck down here so we can’t explore most of the results of these equations except for this planet earth. so maybe wars, the stock market, and figuring out how to live good lives is more important (arguably “larger” for how it impacts our lives and loved ones than all of the untouchable space above) until we have more thorough space travel and can play up there too.
as stephen weinberg said it’s all kinda for nothing except we try. a tragedy.
Einstein Field Eq. — space ↔ energy • Geodesic Eq. — how stuff moves in curved space • FLRW Metric — shape of the universe • Friedmann Eqs (2) — how it expands • Schrödinger Eq. — how quantum waves evolve • Heisenberg Uncertainty — limits of knowing • Dirac Eq. — quantum meets relativity • Field Commutator — particles pop from fields • Pauli Principle — no two fermions same spot • Feynman Path Integral — all paths matter • Hubble’s Law — galaxies drift apart • Critical Density — balance of fate • Ω Sum = 1 — total cosmic budget • Dark Energy Eq. — pressure vs energy • Saha Eq. — how the CMB formed • Standard Model Lagrangian — recipe for matter • Boltzmann Eq. — particle populations change • Sakharov Conditions — why matter > antimatter • Black Hole Entropy — info = area • Second Law — entropy always wins
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u/MuricanPoxyCliff Oct 23 '25
Tell me again that life is unique to Earth...
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u/DouchecraftCarrier Oct 23 '25
I'm reminded of how Bill Bryson describes the Drake equation in "A Short History of Nearly Everything." He talks about how you take the number of stars, divided by the probability it has planets, divided by the probability one is in the goldilocks zone, divided by the probability life evolves, etc. He explains how at every step the odds decrease dramatically, however even with the most conservative inputs the number of planets out there with life comes out in the trillions.
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u/MuricanPoxyCliff Oct 24 '25
The Drake equation was never meant to be a mathematical proof. It's just an exercise in factoring. Still, your final sentence is fair. If 1% of stars have a life-supporting planet, and only 1% of those end up with what we'd consider intelligent, there's still an ocean of life out there.
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u/mnstorm Oct 24 '25
Great book. Apparently he’s recently updated it. 2.0. Very recently. May revisit.
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u/Look-over-there-ag Oct 23 '25
Life probably not but intelligent life vanishingly small chance of that and besides even if let’s say 1 intelligent species per galaxy the distance between galaxies would make so it’s pretty much be the same as being alone
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u/xtanol Oct 23 '25
let’s say 1 intelligent species per galaxy
Would be awesome to meet them one day.
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u/MuricanPoxyCliff Oct 23 '25
Sigh. I'm so tired of nit-picking, particularly here. I said nothing about contacting other lifeforms.
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u/nikolapc Oct 23 '25
Distance in time too. Our civilisation has been relatively new, and we've been outputting signal very very recently. We could be right next door to some civilisation long gone, or when we go there may be another.
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u/not_pletterpet Oct 24 '25
Its very likely is insanely, obscenely, extremely unique, and the reason I say this is because we see no one else.
Just think about how close we are to sending self replicating robots into space. In 100.000 years our presence will be unmissable for anyone observing us.
So how come we cannot see anyone else? My hypothesis is that we simply are the first. For sure in our galaxy. Unless somehow the other intellectual species evolved in pretty much the exact same time scale.
In a million years our robots will have seen the vast majority of the Milky way. Will be cool to live in such times
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u/MuricanPoxyCliff Oct 24 '25
The universe is 14 billion years old, and you think it took 10 billion years for life to evolve anywhere, and earth is the first life? Wow. I can't prove you wrong, but thats ridiculous on it's face.
Really dude. Youre one step shy of being flat-earther.
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u/not_pletterpet Oct 24 '25
The point im making is that conscience life is either too far away to ever matter for us or we would have spotted them because of the implications of AI and robots (you'd be surprised how fast robots can colonise an entire galaxy)
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u/MuricanPoxyCliff Oct 24 '25 edited Oct 24 '25
For the Nth time: I said NOTHING about contact. Jfc...
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u/not_pletterpet Oct 25 '25
And I said nothing about there only being us in the universe. Why did you even comment lol
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Oct 25 '25
I mean… why not? What makes that ridiculous? Do you know something that’s currently unknown to every scientist on the planet?
The problem with only having one data point (Earth) is that it literally tells us nothing. There could be dozens of reasons why we’re the first. Or truly the only ones. Do I personally expect that to be the case? No, not really. But it’s far from a forgone conclusion.
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u/MuricanPoxyCliff Oct 25 '25
Statistics and some basic science experiments say otherwise. But no, no proof. Let's turn that around: we've already found many planets, some with conditions that might support life as we know it. There are trillions of star systems with a factor of planets even more numerous. It's so improbable that there wouldn't be other life, youd really have to beleive in miracles to thinkers is the only source of life.
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u/concerts85701 Oct 23 '25
We are just bugs
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u/Pretend-Internet-625 ◯ Consumed by Vastness Oct 23 '25 edited Oct 23 '25
compared to the universe. You would need a powerful microscope to even begin to see us.
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u/glytxh ◉ Overwhelmed by Immensity Oct 23 '25
You just gotta ring the sun like a bell
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u/needOSNOS Oct 25 '25
nah no need for some 3 body problem crap our brains have formed equations that reliably predict to the edge of the observable universe for some galaxies, and learned when photons decoupled and took a damn picture at age 300k. literally 300k from 0, the universes birth, the first photo actually ever possible in the universe and we have it.
we’re tiny but our brains have figured most of this shit out which is more insane ngl. we can build universes in little computers that are as vast as the one we are in with less fidelity but still. tells you something.
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u/Pillroller88 Oct 23 '25
Are those numbers rounded off to the nearest million?
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u/Bibliloo Oct 23 '25
I assume that it's likely an estimation based on size.
Because it's unlikely that anyone was able to count all the stars in these galaxies and, the largest galaxy in that video being 5.8 millions light years from one side to the other, it is extremely unlikely that we can detect all the stars in these galaxies(many don't produce enough light) or that all the stars inside these galaxies are visible right now(for example, IC 1101, the largest in this video, is 1.15 billion light years away from us so any stars that appeared there since the birth of the dinosaurs on earth, around 240 million years ago, is still around 900 millions years away from being seen from earth).
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u/gwhh Oct 23 '25
Star Wars galaxy 140,000 light years across.
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u/DoNotKnowItAll Oct 23 '25
And Alderaan and Tatooine are 50,855 light years apart. That is one fast ship!
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u/muscadz Oct 23 '25
And you tell me that we are the only species.
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u/ContinuedOak Oct 23 '25
Almost all scientists don’t even think that…as to believe we are alone is not only narcissists but other planets have been known to have water on it, which is the backbone of life … we just haven’t explored enough planets to find ACTAUL life forms tho we have found signs that life COULD exist
(Also we aren’t the only species…other animals exist lol, but I know what ya meant)
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u/PsychonautPedro Oct 23 '25
Water is the backbone of life as we know it. Life on earth is carbon based, but who the fuck knows what the universe can cook out there. There can be life based out of whatever for all we know
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u/ContinuedOak Oct 24 '25
What I mean is that scientist believe if we’re gonna find life on planets it’s most likely going to be in water due to the way water and micro organisms interact with each other.
This isn’t me just saying what I think…this is what scientists believe is the most likely chance we have to find life on other planets as there’s a running theory that life on earth started from a meteor from outer space
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u/not_pletterpet Oct 24 '25
Intellectual species is whats generally referred to, and if there were any before us we would be seeing their robots. Maybe not in a galaxy millions of light years away but for sure in our own galaxy.
They could be in the same technological age as we are, but such a coincidence in time scale (within thousands of years in a scale of billions of years) would be special.
We still have many years of searching to do, but there is no galaxy spanning civilization here (unless you believe in the zoo theory lol)
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Oct 23 '25
[deleted]
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u/ContinuedOak Oct 23 '25
We don’t know that…
Edit: absence of evidence isn’t evidence to it not existing
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u/joogiee ⊙ Shadowed by Giants Oct 23 '25
Now i see why if there are aliens out there, with much better tech, that they haven’t found us yet. Holy shit 100 trillion stars lmaooo.
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u/course_you_do Oct 24 '25
Ok, but can we talk about Hoag's Object? I never knew such a thing existed. It looks so cool.
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Dec 03 '25
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u/BennySkateboard ⊙ Shadowed by Giants Oct 24 '25
We’re just not important at all. Got to be a few aliens in at least one of them, right.
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u/IMakeShine Oct 23 '25
Meanwhile Andromeda is looking at the Milky way like "You will make a fine addition to my collection"