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The jets are 23 million light years in length! That's 140 milky way galaxies laid out -- these are sizes I can't even begin to comprehend
by imranq 2y ago
The jets are 23 million light years in length! That's 140 milky way galaxies laid out -- these are sizes I can't even begin to comprehend
- illesteggplant 2y agoPretty crazy!
- ZoomZoomZoom 2y agoImagine a one meter long jet. Congratulations, you've begun to comprehend it and now are at 1/(2.176 × 1023) of the total length.
- wruza 2y ago10^23 is actually easy to comprehend, because it’s close to the amount of h2o molecules in a syringe. Just that many meters.
- takinola 2y agoImagine the amount of energy required to create a jet that large! The scales are so big, it makes me wonder if there isn’t an upper limit to energy density. How much energy can be in one spot before you inadvertently create a Big Bang?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> it makes me wonder if there isn’t an upper limit to energy density Yes, in a sense. The point at which the energy bends space-time into a black hole.
- doctorwho42 2y agoActually, in theory there is one place denser but our models show it can never happen. The moment right after the big bang. As energy can never be created nor destroyed, all the energy in the universe was practically in one point in space-time a femtosecond after the big bang.
- monero-xmr 2y agoMy layman understanding is that we don't have the theories or math to try and understand this so it's just a black box that we pretend to understand
- chasil 2y agoAt that moment, why didn't the entire [mass of the] universe collapse into a black hole? Perhaps gravity evolved.
- gitanovic 2y agoThat's a question that I always also asked myself, from my layman understanding space time expanded quicker than gravitational collapse
- meroes 2y agoYes and it was never a point, it was just much much denser but still infinite. And so uniform there was no net direction for collapse before expansion took over.
- ks1723 2y agoSince there are conserved quantities like energy and angular momentum it is impossible that everything just collapses. If something collapses, there is usually a large amount of matter which does not collapse to carry away the energy and momentum of the collapsing stuff.
- meroes 2y agoI’m a layman but I think I’ve understood this enough to repeat. The early universe is hypothesized to have been so uniform (gravity pulling in every direction) there was no net direction for anything to collapse to. Because the expansion was so quick, before the uniformity could be ruined due to quantum randomness, it expanded away from there being tons of or one giant black hole. You also must remember the universe was always infinite (in this model). So for every particle there were particles in every direction from them, ie the universe not a point or point like because points have edges. It was (much much) denser, but still infinite and expanding from all regions.
- fasa99 2y ago[flagged]
- arbuge 2y agoFor comparison that's almost 10 times the distance to the Andromeda galaxy (2.5m ly).