Astronomy and Space

Like Sand Through the Hourglass, So Go the Galaxies

patch of sky covered by grain of sand contains 10,000 galaxies

If you want to obscure your view of something, a grain of sand is probably not the first thing that you would choose. It is so small that it is hard to think of too many things it could cover.

Would you believe that a single grain of sand is sufficient to block out your view of 10,000 galaxies? The Hubble Space Telescope has proven there are over 100 billion galaxies. Even though you can’t see them, the sky is simply lousy with galaxies — each containing about 1,000,000,000,000 stars.

Next time you might feel tempted to dismiss a grain of sand of insignificant, hold it out at arm’s length and contemplate what might be behind it. The patch of sky it covers contains more stars than you could count in your lifetime.

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