The Vastness Of The Universe

Continued from yesterday…

Think about one grain of sand on the beach, then consider how many grains of sand exist on that beach. Next, imagine all the grains of sand on all the beaches in your country and your entire continent, plus all the beaches on all the continents combined.

Then add all the grains of sand from all the deserts in the world (which, by the way, make up 29 percent of the total landmass of the Earth).

When you add up all those grains of sand, there are roughly (very roughly here) seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains of sand on Earth. That’s a lot of sand, right?

That number pales in comparison to the number of stars in the universe: there are at least 10 times as many stars as there are grains of sand on the Earth.

If you add all those stars, planets, trees, water, cats, dogs, yourself and everything else that science considers ordinary or visible matter, you will discover that it adds up to about 4.9% of the total universe.

It turns out that the rest is composed of about 27% dark or invisible matter and 68% dark energy. Scientists have virtually no idea what they are. Yet we know that dark matter and dark energy contain creative intelligence that expands the universe at a blistering speed, simultaneously holding everything together mysteriously.

To be continued tomorrow…

Adapted from Section 3 of Awakening To I Am Love by David Youngren