Mind boggling facts that make you go..

[Merlin5]

..'Woah!' or 'Wow!'

I love it when I hear a fact or a scientifically accurate estimate about something that is so incredible it makes you stop and ponder on it. One I heard tonight which I've sort of heard before is this.

There are 10 times more stars in the night sky than grains of sand in all the world's deserts and beaches.
Estimates are 70 thousand million, million, million stars which I think is 70,000 trillion? Scientists basically counted all the galaxies in one small region of the universe close to earth, and they estimated stars per galaxy by galaxy brightness. And that's just one small area of the universe that our telescopes can see, so think of how many zillions of zillions of zillions more stars there probably are going further into the universe.


Anyway GD, give us some jaw dropping facts.

 

[Merlin5]

Some really interesting facts in this thread. Love the sugar one.

I enjoyed this video on black hole size comparison. Much like the OP the size is hard to get your head around
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QgNDao7m41M

That's incredible. I like the way the suns keep multiplying to billions to match the mass of the super massive black hole.

If all the women in Liverpool were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

LOL

If you could fold a piece of paper in half exactly 103 times, it would be thicker than the entire observable universe (93 billion light years).
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/gizm...lf-103-times-it-will-be-as-thi-1607632639/amp

I'm struggling with this one. Even if it could physically be folded that many times, 103 doesn't sound like it would be the thickness of the observable universe. Amazing fact, I'm sure it's absolutely true.

 

[Merlin5]

Theory instead of a fact but still interesting

Interesting video. I watched it twice but didn't really grasp why finding alien life would mean that the filter is ahead of us.