Astronomical Mindsets

What’s the biggest number you can think of?

Not the number you can recite – anyone can say ‘googolplex to the power of one googolplex.’

No, I'm talking about the largest number that you can actually conceive of.

That you can feel the scale of.

For example.

Can you really feel the 15,000,000,000,000 cells that make up your body?

The 510,000,000 square feet that make up the earth’s surface area?

The 130,000,000,0000 kilometers separating the sun from the edge of the solar system?

The 141,000 days that it would take us to travel to the edge of this solar system (while traveling at 25,000 miles per hour)?

The 372,000,000 solar systems it would take to fill up the Milky Way?

The 2,000,000,000,000 other galaxies beyond ours that are separated by an average 9,900,000 lightyears (there are 6,000,000,000,000 miles in a lightyear, by the way)?

No.

You can’t.

Your brains were built to handle matter of a certain size, energy of a few select wavelengths; not infinity.

But maybe, you might look up at the moon tonight, and imagine the countless epic stories that continue invisibly around you, like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to many galaxies of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra, a tiny pixel, a lighted window at dusk.

Interested in trying out the latest Multitudes experience?

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One Ticket to the Multiverse, Please