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I-melted t1_jc3t4qg wrote

Reply to comment by briggs851 in The largest NASA Hubble Space Telescope image ever assembled, this sweeping bird’s-eye view of a portion of the Andromeda galaxy. Credit: NASA, ESA by Davicho77

I’d love to know I’d really good astrophysicists can actually picture these sizes in their heads, or if it’s beyond human capability.

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Bobwindy t1_jc4bxco wrote

They can understand it in terms of relative distance and sizes compared with other stellar objects i would imagine, but I think that humans only frame of reference in terms of understanding distance as we would imagine the distance to the next town or city is the size of our own planet, or for a lucky few the distance to the moon. To truly comprehend a distance and size I think you need to have seen a comparable reference first. We talk of light years and distance to other stars, but we have never experienced that distance first hand.

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I-melted t1_jc4dbfq wrote

There’s a lovely bit in the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, in which a character is punished by being put into something called The Total Perspective Vortex. A machine that allows you to glimpse for a moment the real size of the universe, and yourself relative to it. Which drives you completely mad, obviously.

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