Ch 01-01 A Tour to the Universe



Length scales in the Universe
 
[~ 10 m, the usual scale of the surroundings of a human being]

[~ 1 km, a certain fraction of a city]

[~ 100 km, about the distance between Hsinchu and Taichung]

[~ 10,000 km, about the size of the Earth]

[~ 1,000,000 km, the scale of the Earth-Moon system]

[~ 100,000,000 km, or 108 km, about the distance between the Earth and the Sun]

[~ 1010 km, or 10 billion km, about the size of the solar planetary system]

[~ 1012 km, or 1000 billion km (1 trillion km), not yet reaching the neighborhood stars of the Sun]

[~ 100 trillion km, the scale of typical stellar separation around the Sun]

[~ 10,000 trillion km, or 1019 m, 1021 cm, an area of a large number of stars]

[~ 1021 m, typical size of a galaxy]

[~ 10 23 m, about the size of a galaxy cluster; beyond the cluster scale are the super clusters of galaxies (~ 1025 m), which further form the 'large scale structure' of the observed universe.]