Its actually bigger than that...that was just the "Observable universe"

I can only quote a line from the movie Contact: “If it is just us, it’s an awful waste of space.”

"How do we even measure that? Is it just educated guesses?" Mathematics is a powerful tool. Along with knowledge of how light works, how everything (including light) is affected by gravity, and all sorts of other specialized astrophysical knowledge.....these are much more than just educated guesses.

04:08 That moment when Betelgeuse drops.

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." ~Douglas Adams , The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

And that’s just the visible Universe.

"observable universe" which as far as we know is trillions smaller than the actual one.

A star with planets is a "system" (as our "Solar" system, our star is called Sol.). Many stars together is usually called a "Galaxy". A number of Galaxies together is a "Cluster". A number of clusters is called a "Super Cluster".

“IT’S HUGE...IT’S HUGE!” That’s what she said.

That fear you feel is very natural. We all feel it when we first start learning about the universe’s scale and vast emptiness. It goes away over time the more you learn, even as you’re left stunned by new information. Even still, it’s impossible for us to truly conceive the scale of Earth relative to ourselves, let alone the scale of celestial bodies and galaxies.

01:42 "there's so many new planets now that have been discovered" Me: God I hope she meant Exoplanets by that.

Humans can never imagine : 1. What happens after death 2. How large is the universe

The Sun is actually a star and most of the others are stars just huge but from earth so small and Ceres is a dwarf planet and callisto is a moon of either Saturn or Jupiter and the black thing are black holes and nebula are where stars are born

A lot of the measurements are done by forming a triangle using earths orbit around the sun which we know, and then the parallax (angle) from the object to the two furthest points of our orbit, then simply use triangle rules to find the distance (and correct for other stuff) but that's the basics of most measurements I think :)

the sizes are measured by parallax method , Doppler Spectroscopy and Transit Photometry

I get overwhelmed three times over with videos like these . First is by the size of the planets and stars. Then by the distances between them. Finally by the shear number of them there are.

Fun fact most of these big stars are called “Red Supergiants” and are one stage away from collapsing/exploding. The impact to us would be small but everything around it would be instantly vaporized or absorbed.

That something so small relative to the universe is capable of contemplating its place within it is magical, and it excites me thinking about how likely it is that other life forms, even if far apart, are doing something similar.

There is another video called "How the Universe is Way Bigger Than You Think " with commentary over it, and it blows my mind every time I watch it. Would love to see a reaction to it

Those are red giant stars that will eventually blow up in supernovas. The bigger the star the faster they burn through their fuel so the shorter their lives before they blow up.

Actually, that is just the size of the visible, measurable universe. We simply have no clue yet what is beyond that radius - and we most likely never will.

To learn more of this, look at Carl Sagan's series, "Cosmos," which is available on youtube. Although there is some new information that has been gained since the series was produced in the 1970s, it illustrates the fundamentals with an eloquence and beauty that has never been matched. The first episode includes a brief overview of the size and content of the observable universe and it also begins to explain how we gained this knowledge (including a wonderful description of how Eratosthenes first determined the size of the Earth, 2200 years ago, as the first step in how we learned to measure the distances you asked about.) Neil deGrasse Tyson's updated version of the series is also very good, but I see it as a supplement, not a replacement, to Sagan's original series.

Every star you see in the sky is a sun with possible planets surrounding it.

Theres a limit to our observable universe. With the expansion of the universe, there is a horizon that we will never see past. The light from anything past this horizon will never reach us.

"Why are we here?" Because why not? We just are. There is no reason. It just happened. Physics and chemistry came together and gave rise to life on Earth which eventually evolved into us.

Sees Ceres and the Moon, says: "There's so many new planets now that have been discovered" ... Eh, did you mean the Moon or Ceres? Neither is new, or planet. ... ok ok, Kepler 22b is a recently discovered exoplanet, i guess you meant those.

Yeah, looking up at the stars at night is basically looking back in time.

Callisto appears. "There's so many new planets now that have been discovered." Callisto's one of Jupiter's moons, actually. The FIRST body - Ceres - is considered a dwarf planet (and the only such body found inside the orbit of Neptune, I believe).

So, the measurements are relatively accurate, however, the further you go out away from the Earth, the less accurate the readings get. In simple terms, they use triangulation on a planetary scale. They take measurements of the closer objects by make a distance measurement and then come back 6 months later (Earth on the other side of the Sun) and take another measurement. They use basic triginometry to determine the distance from the object based on the angular change. So, take a line and draw it across between the two measurement points that the Earth takes (6 months apart). This distance is opposite the angle that is formed between the two measurement points and the object that we are trying to measure. Once you have measurements of a close object, you shift to a nearby object and assess that same angle. If the angle gets smaller, the second object is further away than the first (behind it in space, relative to us). The change we know where the 2 points of measurement are and the opposite distance (distance the Earth is 6 months apart). Compare that to the angle and you can work out how far the distance the second object is and by subtracting the distance to the first object, you can determine how far behind the first object the second object is. The is how celestial maps are drawn for the most part. There are other ways but this is the basis for all current methods of mapping the universe. The problem of distance arises from the fact that space is not empty and light can go through material that will make accurate measurements difficult. Gravity is also a concern. Gravity is the weakest force but when you have enough mass (blackholes) the gravity can be significant enough to bend space/time and thus light will bend. In this case, you are not getting a reading of a straight beam of light but a bent (refracted) ray of light. Thus, the light beam travels further and your readings will appear closer than the actual distance since you will only be able to measure to the point the beam is bent, not to the point of origin (the star or nebula). Not sure that helped or made it more confusing. However, you seemed interested in how the measurements were made and how accurate they were. So cheers!

Yeah, the scary part is that all of this is just the stuff we can see and measure. What is actually out there beyond the observable universe could be completely beyond our comprehension. Also, the universe appears to demonstrate "extreme isotropy": In other words, no part of the universe is fundamentally different from another part (maybe with the exception of the Bootes Void). That means that, if there is life here on Earth, we can logically expect to see more life spread evenly throughout the universe. The actual frequency is unknown, of course.

"The Universe" part is not remotely true, that is just the part of the universe that we have seen, called the Observable Universe. The actual universe is even bigger then that.

her:"the sun! it's huge!" me: first thinking should i make a that what she said joke and then realize...she's just at the sun! it's gonna be glorious.

2:40 Yep couldn't say that one

Your excitement and willingness to learn is addictive, I binge watch the heck out of your videos 🤘🏻

It could take a photon of light 100,000 years to reach the surface of the sun to then begin its journey to us. And yes, the universe is big, and we don't even know if physics works the same way in each galaxy.

The shear amount of size and distance can blow your mind outside of Earth. I'm reminded of all the Alien Invasion movies (which I love!) but this reminds us...they don't even know we are here. LOL! Great reaction! You bring up very different stuff than most and we all love you for it! Looks like you are going to hit 100k soon. You deserve it. Lots of Love to ya!

Just a friendly reminder of how small and insignificant we all are. Have a nice day everyone 🙃

Yes, those things larger than sun, which look like stars, are stars. yes.

"It's huge! It's huge!" I don't know why, but I can never hear that enough. Please continue.

I used to teach college math and astronomy. There are some clever ways they have of measuring these sizes and distances. There are some pretty good arguments in support of those measurements.

It’s like - totally mind boggling! 😆

NZ Girl: "Woooowwww Saturn is so big!!!" Me: (waiting to see her face when she sees Betelgeuse) ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽

The disk of the sun on the horizon takes about 2-3 minutes to set. So when you're watching the sunset, it's already set.

There are more stars in the known universe than grains of sand on the entire earth. We're very, very, very small, but beautiful.

This video is really cool!!

this video is really cool, and also first

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.” Carl Sagan

Courtney: a lot of these planets I didn't even know existed Me: some of those were actually moons but okay lol

"Sun" is the name us humans gave our star

What is really crazy is they consider the universe just what we can see. Who knows what is beyond what we can observe.

3:26 That’s when my stress and anxiety really wants to play

The first one which you saw was newly discovered drawft planet located near the asteriod belt and the one call CALLISTO is one of the 200 moons of diifferent planet in our solar system

It can be argued that the question isn't 'Is there life out there?' but rather 'Is there intelligent life near enough to be relevant anytime soon (as in years, centuries, or even millenia)?'

It comes down to far more than just Trigonometry as a lot of people in the comments are saying. That can only get you distances to relatively nearby objects. For further objects you use things like spectroscopy and see how the light has been shifted. Missing bands of light frequencies shift in predictable ways based on distance. Physicists have an overlapping series of measurements called the 'Cosmic Distance Ladder' that enable them to measure and verify distances. It is actually very similar to how we measure dates in the past. No single method can measure all ranges but there are different measurements that overlap in their measuring range and we can verify they both work where they overlap. I don't pretend to remember the details but there are plenty of youtubes explaining it all.

"sirius A" Sirius black : "magic💅"

they use parallax, standard candles, redshift/blueshift, gravitational lensing, all kinds of tricks to figure out how big and how far away stuff is.

Courtney: gasp* The Universe: *smirk* so far...

Too put it bluntly, the universe is so overwhelmingly vast that the light from the "rest" of the universe hasn't had the time to reach us yet, and that's why we call what we can see "observable universe", because that's actually really all we can see.

Courtney , I can have these conversations all day long. There is a video that shows universities outside of our Milky Way universe. It is beyond mental and just crazy how small we are. The thing that really get me is how this great big universe and us are connected. It's mind-boggling! BY THE WAY!!!!!! On a completely unrelated note, thank you for reacting to are Blue Devils space chords (saw what I did there!!!) from 2007!!! It was cool to see that again. In fact if you want to really get a really good understanding of space chords, look at the universe and listen to that. The part where it goes into the cluster parts

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” ― Arthur C. Clarke

We measure astronomical distances using a technique called parallax. Basically, close one eye and look at an object far away. Then have the other eye open instead. Notice the object "move." We use that distance the object "moved" to calculate its distance. Astronomers use this same technique, but with Earth as one of your eyes open or closed depending on where it's at around The Sun each year. The other technique for distances beyond our galaxy is to look at the brightness of "standard candles" things like certain stars that only occur at certain brightnesses, so no matter how far away it is, it's a certain brightness you already know, so you can calculate its distance that way.

We can mesure the size of different objects, by observing their movements trought time, and by its movement, we can calculate how big staff are, and yeah, the beggining are starst, then back holes, nebulas, super clusters, galaxyies, ect edit and yeah, when you watch the stars, you see them as they were back in time, 100 1000 10 000 years back in time

Radiotelescopes focusing on small areas of space detect all light rays and analyse the wavelengths /spectral data to determine what cosmic bodies there are.

I love the thought that although this seems hard to get your head around and completely mind bogglongly alien, we are part of it, we seem insignificant but we came from the stars like everything has, and even when we are gone we will still be part of it, I remember Brian Cox saying this and I've never thought of being insignificant in the same way since ♥

6:35 It's because light travels at 300,000,000 meters per second. That is the yardstick we use to measure distances outside our solar system because of the scale of the universe. Notice the sizes near the end were measured in lightyears. The distance light travels in a second ( 300,000,000 meters) * 3600 * 24 * 365 is a lightyear.

This video has been updated for 2020, and it’s even better in my opinion

How do we measure the universe? Trigonometry. That's the simple explanation, at least. It gets a lot more complicated than that with size and brightness comparisons between objects whose distances are calculated via redshift and stellar parallax as well as other measurement methods.

this is why i love space its super fascinating but super scary and dangerous if u get caught in in the wrong place

The fact that there are many stars that are far larger than our sun, but still look like small dots in the night sky, gives you an idea how ridiculously far these stars are from our solar system. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is composed of around 300 billion stars and our sun is one of these stars. Many other stars also have planets orbiting them, but just the journey to our neighboring solar system would take 100,000 years with today's technology. When viewing an image of the Milky Way galaxy from a distance, it seems as if these stars are all close together, but in reality there is an enormous, dark abyss between them.

You’re right near the end there. A light year is how far light can travel in an earth year. So if there were aliens that are 250 million light years away and they were able to look at the earth all they’d be able to see would be dinosaurs walking around

The crazy part is that it takes 100,000 years for light photons from the Sun's core to reach the surface. Then another 8 minutes for that light to reach Earth.

We can still see 13.8 billion light years away because the universe is 13.8 billion years old

Those unknown planets are usually given numerical "code names" based on the telescope that captured them, other times named from a catalogue listing them - NGC is one such code (named from the New General Catalogue, and focusing mainly on stars and nebulae) These are usually exo-planets, as in - planets not part of our solar system, but discovered orbiting a different star.

Some of those items are planetoids, like Ceres. Some are black holes, some are quasars, and some like the Bootes Void, is just a massive area in space where there is nothing; no stars, no galaxies. Since the universe is so immense and continually expanding, its difficult to comprehend that we are alone and that somewhere out there must exist other intelligent life. But you're correct about one thing, all these stars and galaxies we see in the night sky, we are looking at the past since it takes so long for the light from them to reach us.

Dear Ms. Courtney, please consider this: the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 that were launched in 1977, have within the past three years, just exited the "heliiosphere", which is the last boundary layer of the Sun's influence around our Solar System, and interstellar space!! Ceres orbits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, whereas Pluto orbits in the Kuiper (Keyeper) Belt, beyond Uranus, with a whole bunch of asteroid and other small planetoids.. When the Voyagers left the "heliosphere", one went 45 degrees south, and the other 45 degrees north from the central orbital plane of our system.

Light has insane amounts of info trapped inside of it. Light that travels far begins to redshift and that in of it self can give you a lot of data.

The infinity scale goes both ways.... large and small... that's a mindbender.

We know of about 4000+ planets around distant stars. Distance can be measured by super novae with a fixed brightness. Too, radio telescopes measure blue and red shifted light waves for distance. They can also 'see' thru gas and dust that optical telescopes can't.

We can measure these celestial objects with radiotelescopes at at least three spots at the same time. Because all these telescopes are connected and located around the world it's possible to observe an object almost continuously.

Her at the sun: That's huge Me at the observable universe: That's small

The Universe pulled the ultimate flex. Lmao

we can measure that through math. Since we can estimate the size and mass of the structure based on the distortion it creates of light or its interaction with other celestial objects.

Lol the look on your face at the end was priceless. Great reaction 👌🏾🙌🏾

Kepler22b is very distant, far outside our solar system in a different one, but scientists think based on the colors caused by light refraction from it that it may have water and be a habitable planet where life could exist. You are correct, by the way. The light from stars takes much, much longer to reach us than our sun, so we are seeing objects in distant space as they were in the past.

It’s worth noting that the non-observable universe is estimated to be 150 sextillion times larger than the observable universe - if you multiplied this number by the amount of kilometres in 93 billion light years (the diameter of the observable universe), you’d get a number so large, it has not yet even been named by us.

Trying to understand how big our universe is,is like trying to describe the size of our cruise ships to Christopher Columbus his brain could never fantom a boat that big.

Space is very frightening when you see what's out there. It's awesome!

The scary thing is that one can go further down than up. In other words, there is a greater distance between us and the smallest particles , than there is between the diameter of the universe and the size of a human.

If it has a number it it’s name, it’s either an asteroid (which none of these are), an exoplanet, or a star.

I love how they added the void

Measuring the distance to a star or another galaxy is tricky as the angles are so small. So they use the light from the stars especially variable stars as measuring candles.

Jupiter almost was a sun all by itself, that’s why it’s so chaotic; it’s enormous. It and Saturn have been called earths guardian system, they take all the asteroid/meteorites that would kill us. You put Saturn and Jupiter together, that’s a new star easily.

UY Scuti is the largest observed or known star discovered so far it is massive in fact your solar system could potentially orbit it. also red stars are cooler at around 2000-400 degrees Celsius in surface temp yellow hover around 5000-7000degrees and blue/white can be up to 20,000 degrees celsius.

They forgot My *ick Gaaaatdamit! lmao

Approximate light year calculation: Speed of light =186,000 miles per second. Seconds in a year = 31,536,000 186000 x 31536000 = 5,865,696,000,000 miles = approximately one light year. Callisto is a moon of Jupiter

Kepler-22b is an exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the Sun-like star Kepler-22. It is located about 600 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus

What’s really interesting is the distance between Earth & the Moon is so great that you can fit all the other planets in our solar system into it. Also, on Feb 14th 1990, the Voyager 1 space probe took a photograph of Earth from a record breaking 6 billion km / 3.7 billion miles. In it, is a tiny pale blue dot. Carl Sagan had this to say about it: ‘Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us....The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.... To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known’. Voyager 1 & 2 are now the most distant man made objects in history. They are currently travelling at somewhere in the region of 38’000mph & are around 14 billion miles from Earth. The next big milestone is in 40’000 years when they should pass a star in interstellar space.

Anyone that lives their lives day after day without realizing the size of the universe, is just wasting life. It teach us humility, it teaches us that we are just a small spec of dust. Amazingly, I loved your reaction when you immediately asked: Why are we here?

4:43 To answer your question yes it is a black hole in a way. Its the Event horizon of a black hole. A black hole’s singularity is according to most astronomers the smallest object in the universe, but they have the weight of 20+ suns. The photo is of a black holes event horizon, which is essentially the point of no return. Once you fall past the event horizon you cannot travel at the speed fast enough two achieve escape velocity from a black hole. The TON black hole Has a mass of 66 billion suns, stuffed into a area smaller than an atom, with so much mass shoved into such a microscopic area, the gravitational force of that singularity, will effect an area the size of our solar system.

Yes, when we see the light from these distant stars, hundreds, thousands or maybe even millions of years have passed since the light left the stars. Many stars that we see could be gone by now.