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  • Let us travel now at the speed of light,

  • departing from our home star on a trip across the cosmos to the edge of the known Universe

  • Our imaginary journey begins at midnight on January 1st when we prepare to launch into space

  • at the speed of 186,000 miles/sec

  • We quickly pass the orbit of Mercury

  • Venus

  • And span the 93 million miles that separate the Earth from the Sun in just 8 minutes 19 seconds.

  • We continue on, passing Mars

  • Then the gas giant planet Jupiter

  • Saturn ...

  • Uranus ...

  • Neptune ...

  • Finally after 5 hours and 31 minutes, we race pass Pluto and its companion moon ...

  • Our journey has taken us more than 3.5 billion miles

  • to the outer limit of our Solar System and it's still January 1st

  • Now we alter our flight path and travel in the direction perpendicular to our galaxy

  • Behind us, the 9 planets and the Sun quickly vanished from sight

  • The emptiness of space is broken only by the light of stars so distant, they do not yet appear to move

  • A year passes

  • then two years

  • Three

  • Four years

  • Finally on April 19th of the 5th year, we reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our Solar System

  • We have travelled more than 25 trillion miles and our journey has scarcely begun

  • We are now 10 light years from the Sun, far enough out in space that the stars within our galaxy appear to converge.

  • 100 light years from the Sun,

  • patterns of gas and nebular's material from the arm of the Milky Way fill our view

  • 1000 light years

  • The galaxy's arms and disks become more defined

  • Yet it is not ultil we have travelled at the speed of light for 100,000 years that the entire spiral shape of the Milky Way is recognizable

  • From here on, each point of light we see is no longer an individual star but an entire galaxy composed of billions of stars

  • 5 million years after beginning our journey,

  • the Milky Way is seen as part of a cluster of about 30 galaxies known as the Local Group

  • 50 million light years out, we encounter the large Virgo cluster containing more than 2000 galaxies

  • and so it goes as our travel continue to take us deeper into the cosmos

  • We pass cluster after galactic cluster, each's a building block of a far greater framework

  • A billion years passed

  • 5 billion

  • Finally after 10 billion years we decelerate and pause

  • to observe the theoretical view of the Universe in large scale structure

  • Countless billions of galaxies are now seen the comprised chains

  • masses and thread lights structures that stretch across the cosmos

  • Separated by enormous regions of empty space

  • It is a spectacular tapestry

  • So vast and divers in its design that the power of its creator must truly surpasses all human understanding

Let us travel now at the speed of light,

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