We’re not talking about Buzz, here. Proxima Centauri is the nearest sun to our solar system’s sun. It is 4.22 ly (lightyears) away from us, that’s 5.878625 x 1012 x 4.22, so about 6 million million miles (I’m rounding) x 4.22, which equals about 25,320,000,000,000 miles (25.3 Trillion miles). (Light travels, as you know, at approximately 186,282 miles/second. You can do the calculation if you’d like.)
OK, so a train leaves the station at 8:10 am going 85 mph, how long does it take to get to…
You get the idea. The closest solar system to our solar system is a long way away–as the crow flies. Now contemplate the fact that scientists estimate the Milky Way Galaxy to be between 100,000 ly and 240,000 ly in diameter. The bulk of the stars (estimated to be between 100 billion – 400 billion in number) are within 75-80,000 ly of the galaxy center.
A particle of light traveling from our sun (Sol) takes about eight minutes to reach the surface of the earth.
The immensity of space is inconcievable. Consider Ursa Major (aka the BIG DIPPER). The seven stars that comprise the constellation are 66 ly apart, from the closest star (Megrez, 58 ly away) to the farthest star (Dubhe, 124 ly away). For a good stretch of my adult life, I assumed all the stars of the Big Dipper were in a flat geometric plane–silly me. A particle of light traveling at the speed-of-light from the closest star, Megrez, took 58 years to reach your eyes–and, it traveled 348,000,000,000,000 miles (348 Trillion miles) to get here. (Again, I’m rounding.)
The following sketch was a diagram I threw together during my personal scripture study to illustrate the sheer magnitude of the known universe, specifically our Milky Way Galaxy. (Again, I want to impress on you that this diagram does not necessarily represent the limits of God’s Kingdom, even though some have speculated it does.)
