Considering all the amazing, remarkable, incredible, and fantastic (if not necessarily wise...) scientific and engineering feats that We Humans have managed to pull-off during the last 10,000 years or so, We have (...understandably) an age-old, and therefore *heavily* ingrained tendency for 'bragadoccio', to "toot our own horn", and a *lot*, as We all rush about the minimal land surface of this water-ball, which Humans (ironically) call Planet 'Earth'. [...see that little blue dot to the lower-left of the Sun? That's us. Not even as big as an average sun-spot.] Perhaps We All would have a better grasp on just how small and fragile Our own little corner of Existence is, were We All able to appreciate the sizes of things, and the spaces between them, that are all around Us ...*off* the planet! For instance... ...when you look up at the Sun in the sky? That's not where it *really* is at that very moment! At a distance of 93 million miles, it's SO far way that photons, which travel at the speed 'c' (over 186,000 mi *per second*), will take over eight *minutes* to get here. That means that the 'Sun' you see in the sky is almost a 'ghost' of the Sun, because at that moment, it's actually *four* of its own diameters further along the path to what we call 'sunset'. ...but that's nothing! The following 3 examples are in order of 'bigness'. They are of SUCH an order of magnitude that thinking about them too long might just semi-jellify both of one's pre-frontal lobes! So... we have attempted to re-format the scales that are involved, by using verbal images called "theoretical". *You* will be your own OHP, because your imagination can build a *much* better image than any cgi-magic we could present to you. Think of this as "literary radio". You hear, or read, and then your imagination paints the picture.

	=============================================== When you look at the Sun in the sky, have you any idea how big it really is? Earth is roughly 8,000 miles in diameter, so how big would the Sun be? 50,000 miles? 100,000 miles? 250,000 miles? How about 500,000 miles? Too big?!? Well, ...guess what? The Sun is just 13% short of one MILLION miles across the face: 865,000+, making it *2.7 million miles* around at the equator! If you made 6 round-trips to Luna, that would be just once around the Sun. As a matter of fact, you could put the Earth, with the Moon in orbit about it, *both* INSIDE the Sun, with almost half a billion miles to spare! If you could use the Sun as a piggy-bank, it would hold over 1.3 million Earths. Here's your scale-model: picture a clear plastic beach-ball. (Now fill it with b-b's...)
	=========================================== Hold the image of the Sun in your mind as the gigantic sphere of flaming gas that it is. Now back away from it, further, 'way further, until it's only about the size of a three-hole punch-dot. It's still the Sun, hissing and roaring in its Nuclear Fury, but you have backed-off from it so that now you can also see beside it the image of the largest star known in this galaxy, a class of star called a "Red-Giant". This object is so *HUGE*, that if our Sun is this 3-hole punch-dot, the R-G is a *45 story* building!! It is SO humongous that if you were to put it in the center of our Solar System, in place of the Sun, the R-G's outer-skin, its photosphere, would extend out to just a bit past the *orbit of Saturn*!
	============================================= Think about Earth, and its one vast global ocean. Think about those gigantic expanses of water and the beaches that border all of them. Think about all the deserts of the planet and all the mega-tons of sand in the dunes of those deserts. Think about all the beaches and the deserts, and try to remember that there are tens of thousands of grains of sand in just one ordinary coffee cup. Think about all those millions and billions and trillions and kajillions of literally *uncountable* grains of sand in all the dunes and beaches of our planet. Now, ...your Moment of Cosmic Zen: ...there are roughly one million stars in the Universe for every single grain of sand on Earth. ************************************************************************ We publish a tv-alert list of interesting tv-shows to watch for, so if you'd like to be included on the list, use the e/mail button below to leave us an address where we can send the alerts. And also please feel free to leave us any comments you may have about our site. Thanks for visiting us, and be sure to use those Silver Sun-Triangle hot-links back on Page 1. They're quite an adventure on their own. ...ejh ************************************************************************

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