[Avodah] Sand and stars

[T613K at aol.com]

I wrote:
 

>> Today we know that there are in fact MORE stars in the  universe than 
there  
are grains of sand on earth!  The numbers are  staggering, truly  
mind-boggling, numbers that even the greatest genius  cannot really grasp.  
 There are 
somewhere between two billion and  four billion stars in our galaxy  alone, 
and this Milky Way galaxy is  only one of BILLIONS OF  GALAXIES! <<




>>>>>
 
I made a mistake and thereby vastly UNDERcounted the number of stars in the 
 universe.  I should have written that there are TWO HUNDRED BILLION stars  
or more in our galaxy.  I have even seen estimates of four hundred billion  
and six hundred billion.  
 
Now I am sure that everyone here can easily visualize the difference  
between a mere two billion and two HUNDRED billion.......
 
 
Just in our galaxy alone.
 
Can you, by the way, picture the DISTANCES involved -- knowing that there  
are billions of galaxies?!  If light travels at 186,000 miles a second, it  
takes light from our sun eight minutes to reach earth.  The sun is 93  
million miles away.  Eight minutes to go 93 million miles.  OK, now,  there are 
visible galaxies that are so far away that their light left them not  eight 
minutes ago and not eight years ago, but a MILLION years ago!  Every  eight 
minutes that light traversed another 93 million miles, and it still took a  
million years to reach us. Who can possibly grasp such distances and such  
numbers?  And there are galaxies that are visible to the Hubble telescope  
that are much, much further away than a million light-years.  Many of the  
stars we see are actually entire galaxies consisting of hundreds of millions of  
stars.
 
Have a look at this, for instance:  
_http://www.universetoday.com/82855/long-ago-in-a-galaxy-far-far-away/_ 
(http://www.universetoday.com/82855/long-ago-in-a-galaxy-far-far-away/) 

 
 
This is why I have said in the past that the more science one knows, the  
greater the appreciation of  "mah gadlu ma'asecha Hashem" and "mah rabu  
ma'asecha Hashem."
 
PS If anyone is worried about the idea that light left some  of those 
galaxies millions of years ago and has been traveling towards  us for millions of 
years, here are a couple  of ways to think about  it:
 
A. Bereishis may be talking about our planet and not about the entire  
universe, which may have been created long before our earth.  (Rashi  himself 
points out that there was already water on the first day, but that the  Torah 
never says when the water was created.)
 
 
B. Another possibility is that the universe was created with the light from 
 the stars already enroute, AS IF it had been emitted millions of years  
ago.  That's another way of saying that the universe was created LOOKING  like 
an old universe.  Just a possibility.
 

--Toby  Katz
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