They say...

theoretically speaking, the "big bang" released almost completely pure energy at incredible temperatures....

In this release of energy, almost equal amounts of matter and anti-matter was released...

And matter outnumbered anti-matter by a ration of only 1/1,000,000...

So only 1/1,000,000 of the energy released in the big bang is in existence, and this composes the known universe...

Of the "known" universe, only between 1-6% of it, is in the form of elements represented in the periodic chart..

And most of this "stuff" is held in vast clouds of gas, asteroids, planets, stars, black holes, etc...

The other 94-99% is in the form of what has been referred to as "dark matter".

It is called dark matter because although we "know" it exists through it's effect on gravity and the shape of the universe, however, it has never been seen, or directly observed...

Theories of it's composition range from vast "invisible" objects, to sub-sub-atomic particles, so small, plentiful and fast moving that millions of these un-detectable objects would have to be passing through each of us at any given moment to account for it all...

To appreciate the vastness of the known universe... if the known universe were the size of the earth, then in relation, our solar system (the size of pluto's orbit around the sun) would be the size of a single small bacteria, which would be about 1/100th as large as the period at the end of this sentence. But even though our solar system would be the size of a bacteria in that scale, it would still take us over 10 years to travel less than halfway across that period in the fastest spacecraft to date (Nasa's New Horizons) which takes an hour, to travel 1/6th the distance that light travels in a second.

The number of stars in the universe is so great that there are more of them, than there are grains of sand, on all of the beaches on earth... in fact, there are over a million stars in our universe for every grain of sand on the earth... and in this analogy, the total number of stars visible from earth with the naked eye, would amount to less than two tablespoons of sand.

But for the vastness of the known universe the vast majority of it is empty space.... for example, if the sun were reduced to a scale of slightly less than one inch, Pluto would be 100 yards away and 1/50th of an inch across... in this scale the speed of light would equal about 1 inch every 5 seconds...

The vastness of outer space is dwarfed by the vastness of inner space... if the nucleus of a hydrogen atom (a single proton) was slightly smaller than an inch, the electrons would be about 210 yards away and 1/150th of an inch in size... about the size of a grain of sand... imagine that, a single grain of sand, orbiting an object less than an inch in size, millions of times a second, at a distance of over 210 yards...

And the star closest to our sun is Proxima Centauri. To give you a feel for how far away we are from everything else, if our sun were the size of a period printed on a page (.5mm), Proxima Centauri would be the same size, but 8 miles away. In this same scale, the closest sun to us with planets (Bernard's Star) would be 12 miles away, or in terms of the bay area, if our sun was represented by a period printed on a page in Oakland, CA. City Hall, Bernard's Star would be a period printed on a page in San Francisco, CA. City Hall.

But perhaps the most incredible number, is the age of the life contained within every living human. Each human on this planet, represents an unbroken chain of life extending back 3.5 billion years (which spawned plants and animals 550 million years ago)... each human that is alive today, represents an unbroken chain of between 215 million to - 550 million lifeforms that were born, lived to reproduce, and nurtured and (for higher level life forms) protected young that then lived to reproduce, and so on, and so on... and each human that lives, and does not reproduce themselves, represents the end of a line of life, that endured at least 3.5 billion years, to the day that individual died...

Is it no wonder, that the desire to reproduce, is the strongest urge and strongest desire on earth, save the perpetuation of ones own life?


I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
-Ecclesiastes