How big is the universe ... compared with a grain of sand? 

Mad respect to the guy who counted all the grains of sand on earth

I don't feel like paying my loans anymore.

Its mind blowing how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of existence, yet we live our lives like we are the center of the universe

The microworld is endless too. Size is relative if you REALLY think about it.

Crowning a Miss Universe winner every year seems rather presumptuous on our part.

I feel sorry for any intelligent life that evolved on a planet where sand is non-existent. They haven't got a clue how big the universe is.

I remember my science teacher mentioning the concept of looking back into time with stars way back when I was a freshman in high school (about 15 years ago), and it was the first major thing I can remember that really made me stop and rethink life and how it works. The fact that I’m looking at something, but not seeing it as it is now, but as it was because of distance is absolutely baffling

Having watched hundreds of videos about universe over the past few days... I can say this one is certainly one of the best and most simplest videos about universe and its size.

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

That's why I keep watching these. I'm addicted trying to comprehend this stuff

I trust him, because of his haircut.

Have watched this 5 times and am still reeling. Probably will always reel at the numbers. Thank you for trying to explain, such a trip!

I can't imagine how ants would feel after watching this

Now reverse it and think just how small an electron is.

How GREAT must THE CREATOR be ! Totally mind boggling

The fact that, as creatures we are conscious of what is around us has to be called Magical!

To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour - William Blake

Moon: I'm big Earth: I'm bigger Sun: is this a joke? the universe: y'all are cute little protons Dark matter: AM I INVISIBLE?

So difficult to comprehend “no end”…..just for ever and ever.

His grain of sand analogy at the end reminded me of a book called Powers of Ten that I read years ago. It was a view of earth basically that begin from somewhere far out in the universe and moved closer by a factor of ten each step until you were at the subatomic level.

Some people can't comprehend the shape and size of the earth, and now you want them to imagine the size of the universe?

For all we know, that grain of sand could be the universe itself

Every two to three months I come back to this and things are taken into perspective.

This is a great therapy for me. I quickly realize, the problems we have here, are so meaningless. I Just love listing to these amazing stories!!

I knew clicking on this would give me anxiety............ back to the cat videos I go .

look at all those stars and galaxies there is no way we are alone in universe

Out of all videos I've seen on the subject, this one felt most concise in terms of scale and space-time.. which can't be easy to condense into six minutes and change.

I remember a film they showed us in high school earth science. The guy in there said that if our solar system was the size of a quarter including Pluto, then the Milky Way would be as big as North America. Blown mind.

I think the single most depressing feeling I've ever had in my life, more than heart break, more than losing something I cared immensely about, is that I will never get to see all this universe has to offer. All the galaxies, the stars and worlds that exist out there that I'll never see, the possibility that there's other life and I'll never know. The beautiful clouds of gas, the bright glow of a white or blue star and the truly cataclysmic destructiveness of a black hole and surrounding event horizon. Knowing that with all the beautiful things I've seen on earth there could possibly be billions of billions more that are equally or more magnificent than those. But most of all that on a planet of 7 billion people, thinking about never really knowing who else is out there gives me a crushing loneliness. I don't know why but thinking it's just us makes me extremely sad I can't just leave to go look, jump in a ship and take off to see what's out their. I envy the generation that gets to do that and at least if I can't I can contribute enough that the dream stays alive in through the ages.

The edge of the observable universe is NOT 13 billion light years away. It is closer to 47 billion light years away. This is because the universe has been expanding while the light was travelling.

I always remember playing with Parallax using my hands as a kid but I never knew what it was called! It's funny how early astronomers could use light and Parallax to invent the "Light-Year" eventually. The representation of what the grain of sand blocks out being a Universe is mind-blowing!

Nothing quite like watching a short RU-vid video about the vastness of space and realizing how small and insignificant you really are. Thanks.

Things get equally mind-baffling when we look at things on a smaller scale. There might be more stars in the visible universe than there are grains of sand on earth, but in that grain of sand there are more partices than there are stars in the visible universe. Atoms in that grain of sand are also very, very distant from each other. If you would take a tiny marble ball and think its the core of the atom, its electron field would be around 50 meters away from it. And between different atom’s electronic fields, the distance gets even more immense. The scale of things is just as ”large” with small things as it is with big things.

Now imagine the universe is just an atom in this larger universe

All that space, yet someone still parks next to me in an empty carpark

It's crazy to think you could just keep going an going forever all eternity an never reach an end to the universe 🤯

"1000's of galaxy's within a patch of sky the size of a grain of sand" My Brain: Bye! You comprehend that. I'm out of here".

Quality thought provoking subject here and excellent job done at conveying the profound enormity of it. Using the cathedral and grain of sand to show scale comparisons was brilliant.

Thank You for this video.. I just saw this today. When I contemplate the cosmos (and I do this every day pretty much) I am awestruck by the incredible size and age of the universe when compared to the speck of dust in some backwater arm of our galaxy that we call home. I marvel at the difference between what we as humans know and the vast array of science, history, epistemology and metaphysics that we may use to describe and come to terms with our relative place in these cosmos. It is utterly fascinating. And it is in a sense ironic. The irony is that even with all our giant telescopes and microscopes we have yet to discover any structure as complex and nuanced as the human brain. So magical and yet so utterly common on our planet. Such thoughts can lead us down many avenues as we try to unlock the story of both our own past and our place going forward in time. Is the human brain unique to our planet? Or is our brain replicated elsewhere in the universe. I honestly don't know. But such topics as this leaves us to ponder and re-evaluate our existence and its meaning. It is something I think about often. And if you made it all the way to the end of my impromptu tract, thanks for hearing me out. I think we are best served when we discuss these matters often. So thanks. I am done for now.

One of the first lessons of astrophysics is humility; us humans are more insignificant than a grain of sand compared to the scale of the universe.

Dad: Son, what did you learn from the video? Son: I learned the Durham Cathedral is as big as the entire universe.

It really is mind bending trying to imagine the size of the universe. The earth cannot possibly be the only planet able to support intelligent life in the universe. The chances of us bumping into each other however is infinitesimally tiny. Our star is hardly remarkable among a sea of 200 billion just in our own galaxy, not to mention the over 100 billion other galaxies out there. Space is also very roomy, our nearest star is multiple trillions of miles away, even asteroids have millions of miles between each one. In short, the chances of aliens coming across us accidentally must be less than the chance that men's and women's minds meeting in understanding. This stuff really is mind bending and I love it

Excellent work . Very well compiled and presented.

Well done video explanation about space and distances. Chances are, we are not alone.

The fact that some people think we are alone in this universe is so stupid. How, out of 100 billion galaxies, could we be the only ones.

Takes my breath away just trying to imagine how vast it could possibly be...

This is the best universe size comparison video on youtube

This was a very nice informative video. I hope to see more.

Funny how he is telling us all this in front of a place that teaches that everything he just said was incorrect

Even if you could go 1,000 times the speed of light, it would still take 100 years to cross the Milky Way galaxy.

Absolutely mind blowing! Reminds of how small we really are!! To think there is no other sustainable life out there is absurd! Statistical impossibility that there is no other planets such as our that have the correct distance from a live star and all the other makings of our solar system to create life in theirs!

Thank you this is the best simplified description of the universe ever presented.

When I was a kid in elementary school, I was reading in our science textbooks and saw like several nearest galaxies and was like, “I wanna visit those when I get older” but I guess I overlooked the fact that there’re more galaxies than we can count and we have no way of transportation that can reach another galaxy.

Absolutely fantastic. Very well presented and very understandable thank you.

I get the feeling that the universe is a grain of sand to an ultra-universe. There's no end...it keeps going.

the best video i have ever seen about the universe size

Galaxy update : it has been verified that the amount of galaxies in our observable universe has increased from 100 billion to 2 trillion. ✔️

I actually thought of it as if the milky way was a grain of sand, the entire universe would be planet earth💥

I didnt quite understand the analogy, but your video was helpful.

I love the turnaround at 3:40

I have been watching you video around 40 times every year ..... THANKS

6:15 Me when I was nine, telling my parents what I learned in school today

Dr Pete many many thanks just amazing.

Thanks for the video

Me trying to explain this to my girlfriend when she didn't know what a galaxy was.. her reply was " isn't that a chocolate you eat ? ", i left the room.

At the time of this video being made, physicists and astronomers thought the universe had 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe... Now we know there is over 2 trillion or possibly millions of times bigger than that, so a better comparison with this galaxy relative to the universe would be that grain of sand in comparison with our whole planet at least!

Chances are high that the universe is infinite - just as time is. 99.9% of human beings have absolutely no concept of infinity...

Thank you. This was a fascinating comparison.

4:25, at first sight, i was thinking that he was giving a finger....😂

Imagine the entire Universe being like a grain of sand? Do you see that building? That's Chuck Norris.

0:39 Leveling up some Skyrim perks I see...

So since there are more that a billion bacteria living in our bodies. I could be a whole universe for bacteria. My feet could probably be the Milky-way.

And then add a multi-verse on top of that.

So does the universe have an ending? Or doest it have a corner? Or is it limitless? Or its just like earth who's round in shape but bigger or anyone? Any idea? Its mind blowing.

Absolutely fascinating.

Excuse me while I pick my mind up off the floor. Great way of explaining the size of the universe.

So inspirational... Perhaps we all should watch this

Thank-you for the video, it gave me a better perspective on how unfathomable the size of the observable universe. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the number of stars being more than the number of grains of sand contained on Earth. I then think of the vastness of the Antartic, Artic, Sahara, Arabian, Australian, Gobi, Kalahari, etc. deserts and my mind starts to hemmorhage....Another head gasket officially blown! 🤯

I watch this video at least once every year since 2013... just to makes me cry... Thank you

I have never thought about what someone on another galaxy with a super powerful telescope, powerful enough to see persons on earth surface could actually see in this moment... THAT blew my mind away. I do know and understand that when i see a star, i'm looking at the past; billions of years in the past and that maybe that star doesn't exists anymore, but i had never before thought about someone on another planet, looking at us in our past... mindblowing

Ratings to my guy who made it so easy explaining what level we are on

When you wanna go somewhere and think it's far, just remember how small the earth is compared to the Universe.

I really loved the analogy of what Earth would look like from another universe, and what time frame it would be and what they would see.

“My Existence” I exist somewhere in between, Yesterday’s sun, And tonight’s darkness, Standing on the edge of tomorrow, Waiting for a shooting star... I discovered this in a hauntingly beautiful poetry book, “12:12 Midnight” by Danielle Ever Rose... It was a great read📚✨

It is just mind-boggling!! Fascinating explanation!

Great video!

1. "The Universe" is big but that means it ends sometime/somewhere... what's past that point? 2. If seen from Andromeda, the Earth appears unhabited, then we have pretty low chances of being seen by other civilisations. And there are other civilisations, in a form or another. Maybe they'll se us in another million years watching cat videos on facebook.

How do we know that Andromeda Galaxy still exists if we are looking into the past? 2.5 million years ago?

Watching this before my new job- makes me feel much less nervous hahaha

Just numbs my mind just thinking about it.

This is the best video, and the most well written video I've ever watched. it didn't drag on with info that I didn't need at the moment. It was short and to the point, and was so descriptive, and brought these questions down to layman's terms . But is also depressing. That I realize I'm just a worthless bug and mean nothing in the Universe.

I know what he means about trying not to imagine how big the universe is because I have done that many times in my life sat here and literally just tried to imagine with my eyes closed how big do universes and it literally can get to a point where it's scary to even try to imagine cuz it just goes on forever

I really like to watch and watch again this video. How small we are, our faint blue dot... but how much each human life matters.

So if we go by the theory that we are looking the past ..doesnt that mean currently there might be life out there but unable to detect due to light speed constraints???

Im running out of brain cells to comprehend, really mind blowing and amazing video, how vast the universe is

Great video

*I don't understand the concept that a star located 13 billion light-years away from us is necessarily closer to the origin of the universe. In the analogy of an explosion, some fragments are ejected earlier than others, but their distances apart are a separate matter. While a galaxy situated 13 billion light-years away from us might be distant from the center of the explosion, it coincidentally aligns with our 13 billion-year distance. This alignment doesn't inherently imply it's closer to the universe's explosion origin.*

omg... well explained.. thank u so much

4:25 thought he was f uing the sky ;/

Wow. This is amazing