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Let us travel now at the speed of light,
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departing from our home star on a trip across the cosmos to the edge of the known Universe
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Our imaginary journey begins at midnight on January 1st when we prepare to launch into space
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at the speed of 186,000 miles/sec
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We quickly pass the orbit of Mercury
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Venus
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And span the 93 million miles that separate the Earth from the Sun in just 8 minutes 19 seconds.
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We continue on, passing Mars
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Then the gas giant planet Jupiter
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Saturn ...
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Uranus ...
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Neptune ...
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Finally after 5 hours and 31 minutes, we race pass Pluto and its companion moon ...
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Our journey has taken us more than 3.5 billion miles
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to the outer limit of our Solar System and it's still January 1st
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Now we alter our flight path and travel in the direction perpendicular to our galaxy
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Behind us, the 9 planets and the Sun quickly vanished from sight
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The emptiness of space is broken only by the light of stars so distant, they do not yet appear to move
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A year passes
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then two years
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Three
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Four years
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Finally on April 19th of the 5th year, we reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our Solar System
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We have travelled more than 25 trillion miles and our journey has scarcely begun
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We are now 10 light years from the Sun, far enough out in space that the stars within our galaxy appear to converge.
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100 light years from the Sun,
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patterns of gas and nebular's material from the arm of the Milky Way fill our view
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1000 light years
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The galaxy's arms and disks become more defined
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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
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From here on, each point of light we see is no longer an individual star but an entire galaxy composed of billions of stars
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5 million years after beginning our journey,
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the Milky Way is seen as part of a cluster of about 30 galaxies known as the Local Group
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50 million light years out, we encounter the large Virgo cluster containing more than 2000 galaxies
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and so it goes as our travel continue to take us deeper into the cosmos
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We pass cluster after galactic cluster, each's a building block of a far greater framework
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A billion years passed
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5 billion
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Finally after 10 billion years we decelerate and pause
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to observe the theoretical view of the Universe in large scale structure
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Countless billions of galaxies are now seen the comprised chains
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masses and thread lights structures that stretch across the cosmos
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Separated by enormous regions of empty space
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It is a spectacular tapestry
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So vast and divers in its design that the power of its creator must truly surpasses all human understanding
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