You occupy a very special place in the universe. Or, perhaps more accurately, a very special size.
Things in this universe can be mind-bogglingly large, like galactic clusters, or unimaginably small, like quarks. You — all of us — inhabit a peculiar place in this grand scale of sizes: smack-dab in the middle. The fundamental unit of life, the living cell, sits at the geometric mean between the biggest things in the universe and the teensiest.
From this privileged position in the middle, how well do you know all things great and small?
This quiz will test your knowledge, and the answers will show you where you sit on our new Quantum to Cosmos interactive scale of the universe.
Click the social buttons at the bottom to share your score and challenge your friends!
1. The nearest galaxies to our own Milky Way are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. If you were travelling from Earth at the speed of light (let's pretend for a moment that is possible), how long would it take you to get to the Large Megellanic Cloud?
2. One of the largest known stars is VY Canis Majoris, a hypergiant. If you plopped VY Canis Majoris where our Sun sits now, what would be its impact on our solar system?
No effect. Our Sun is a hypergiant too.
The polar ice caps on Earth would melt 30 percent faster.
It would create a black hole that would swallow our galaxy.
It would reach the rings of Saturn, incinerating us in the process.
3. Let's go small. Really small. So small, there can be nothing smaller without breaking the laws of physics. That size is called the Planck length. How small is it?
Half the size of those floater things you sometimes get on your eyeballs.
4. Now let's go big with a simple question: how big is the entire universe?
5. The Moon is leaving us, continually drifting further away from Earth. How much more distant does it become each year?
6. The James Webb Space Telescope will be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, and will give humanity unprecedented glimpses deep into the cosmos. Once it reaches its orbiting distance, roughly how far from home will it be?
7. As celestial bodies go, neutron stars are pretty small in size, but incredibly massive. If you could scoop a teaspoon of neutron star stuff, how much would it weigh?
8. How small would you have to squish the Earth for it to become dense enough to create a black hole?
9. Approximately how many Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy are believed to orbit in the so-called Goldilocks zone around a Sun-like star, making them potentially hospitable to life?
10. Our Sun will someday expand dramatically to become a red giant (destroying Earth in the process), then fizzle down into a white dwarf. But don’t worry – that won’t happen for another ______ years.
11. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, enabled one of humanity’s greatest scientific discoveries when it detected gravitational waves. Although LIGO is an enormous apparatus, with perpendicular detector arms stretching four kilometres each, the disturbance detected by those arms was significantly smaller. How small was it?
12. The gravitational waves measured by LIGO were created by the violent collision of two black holes. Judging by the distance from Earth where this collision happened, roughly when did it occur?
13. How far from home are the Voyager probes?
14. There’s a supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy called Sagittarius A*. How massive is it?
15. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global network of interconnected telescopes aimed at capturing humanity’s first image of a black hole. It is currently aimed at two black holes: Sagittarius A* and M87. Which of the following statements about them is true?
M87 was the model for the black hole in the movie Interstellar, and Sagittarius A* inspired Soundgarden's song "Black Hole Sun"