Loading video...

Video Failed to Load

Go Home

Scientists discovered a galaxy so enormous that it almost doesn't seem real. Known as IC 1101, this cosmic giant may contain nearly a trillion stars, making it one of the largest galaxies ever discovered. For comparison, our own Milky Way contains only a fraction of that number. The scale...

16,920 views • 20 days ago •via X (Twitter)

0 Comments

No comments available

Comments from the original post will appear here

Related Videos

Brian Cox is pointing at one dot. The dot is a galaxy with 100 billion stars. There are 200 billion more on the same map. The thin line at the top of that map represents a billion light-years. At the speed of light, it would take a billion years to cross that sliver. The math gets stranger. The observable universe holds roughly 30 sextillion stars. Every grain of sand on every beach on Earth combined is about 7.5 sextillion. The universe has 4x more stars than Earth has sand. The deeper number is which of those galaxies you can ever actually reach. Dark energy is accelerating cosmic expansion. Space itself is stretching faster than light can cross it. The cosmic event horizon sits at roughly 16 billion light-years from Earth. Anything past that is moving away from us faster than light can chase. We can see those galaxies because their photons left billions of years ago when the gap was small enough. We cannot reach them. We cannot send a signal. We cannot know what they look like now. 97% of the galaxies on Cox's map are already disconnected from our future. Visible artifacts of a past that has ended. Now look forward. In about 150 billion years, accelerating redshift will push every galaxy outside our Local Group beyond detection. Andromeda will have merged with the Milky Way. The other 199,999,999,999 galaxies will be invisible. Civilizations on planets around future stars will look up and see only one galaxy. Their telescopes will tell them the universe ends at the edge of the Local Group. They will not see cosmic background radiation. They will not observe expansion. They will not know about the Big Bang. The evidence will have receded past their light cone. Every astronomy textbook they could ever write would conclude the universe is small, static, and made of one galaxy. We exist in a 100-billion-year window where the universe is still legible. Before us, too hot, too dense, too young. After us, the lights go out one galaxy at a time. 30 sextillion stars on the map. A 100-billion-year window in which to read it. We exist inside the only overlap.

Aakash Gupta

53,199 views • 1 month ago