Quora User Shares Mind-Blowing Facts About How Big Our Universe Is In A Viral Post

Quora User Shares Mind-Blowing Facts About How Big Our Universe Is In A Viral Post

If you’re anything like me, you can spend hours daydreaming and pondering questions about this and that. Like why the sky is blue, why chocolate tastes like, well, chocolate, and how big the universe is. As it turns out, the universe is far, far bigger than you think. And our imaginations don’t always do it justice.


Luckily, Krister Sundelin, an e-learning producer from Gothenburg in Sweden, gave us all a helping hand. He deconstructed the size of the universe in an easily understandable way on Quora, in response to a user’s question about what fact about the universe’s size blows people’s minds.


Krister’s answer made quite a few of us feel very small (and a wee bit insignificant, too!). The vastness of the universe is a frightening thing, but personally, realizing this can make us appreciate every moment, and make every interaction and experience feel special. Check out Krister’s full Quora answer below, dear Pandas. When you’re done, let us know how you felt after absorbing all the information.


Scientists currently believe that the universe is around 93 billion light-years in diameter. The BBC notes that, in comparison, our galaxy, the Milky Way, is between 100k and 150k light-years across.


Krister, from Sweden, deconstructed just how huge the universe really is in an approachable and witty answer on Quora






Image credits: Krister Sundelin




Image credits: Krister Sundelin






Image credits: Krister Sundelin





Image credits: Krister Sundelin




Image credits: Krister Sundelin





Image credits: Krister Sundelin




Image credits: Krister Sundelin


Krister is a polymath who has done a bit of everything in life: he’s an e-learning producer, while previously he’s worked as a copywriter (hurrah!), web developer, game designer, and even a teacher.


“Born in 1970, I have survived disco, punk, prog, metal, synth, goth, and pop. I like food and chocolate too much, and I get hiccups from whisky (even if I like it a lot). I’m also introverted like heck,” the Swedish expert writes on their Quora profile.


Krister is a powerhouse on Quora. He’s active in 21 spaces and has had a whopping 48.6 million content views since joining the platform in May 2014. Last month alone, his content had 2.2 million views. This just goes to show that the Swede’s insights are spot-on!


His insightful answers on a variety of topics have spread all over the internet and have ended up even on such renowned sites as Forbes and HuffPost.


In one of his essays, Krister notes that scientists believe that the universe has existed for 13.8 billion years since the event that started it all—the Big Bang. Krister also notes that there was a period of inflation at the earliest moments of the universe’s existence.


What’s more, he noted that researchers believe that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Something else that Krister notes is that the universe “weighs too much,” at least compared to how much we believe it should.


“There seems to be some mass there that we can only detect through its gravitational influence, and there’s a lot of it: five times more than regular observable matter. We have dubbed it ‘dark matter’ as a placeholder name: ‘dark’ because we can’t observe it directly, and ‘matter’ because whatever it is, it has gravity,” he writes.


The universe is a marvelous thing (technically, you could argue that it’s the only thing because it’s the set that contains all the stuff that ever existed or will exist). We can only hope to unravel some of its deeper secrets in the future. It’s people like Krister who help us digest all the new findings and make science approachable for everyone.


Internet users shared their own thoughts about the vastness of the universe







Others tried explaining how the size of the universe makes them feel






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