Size of the observable universe

[Blackhawk]

Just so you understand that each galaxy is huge: our Milky Way galaxy for example contains 100-400 billion stars.

 

This is the greatest picture which mankind has taken so far. Every little dot (except maybe a few stars) is a galaxy. And it only shows a tiny tiny part of the sky.

You can download the picture in up to 25500x25500 resolution here: https://hubblesite.org/image/4492/news

[Willie]

That lets you know the scope of reality. Our Hubble Telescope (soon to be James Webb telescope) is our ability to be self-aware. It’s only looking into things as they were, not as they are. Who knows how things are?

[Carl-Richard]

It's infinitely bigger than that  

[Dazgwny]

I had this really difficult to describe experience to do with infinite galaxies on a psychedelic trip. Could very well be delusional though as I was tripping hard but seemed like such a revelation to myself at the time. It was as though I’d discovered that I was a black hole at the centre of the universe. Just absolutely nothing. With all my ideas and concepts of myself spiralling outwards from the centre, building upon each other to create my entire manifested physical existence, my whole reality from birth. Then when I’m to physically die the spiral would sort of then come inward in a strange loopy way right back into the black hole as if going full circle back to my existence of nothing. I was then visualising all people as this, not hallucinating, just in my minds eye, but very strongly, sort of like a a galaxy spiralling everybody’s head, like the head was the black hole and the galaxy spiralling out from it was all their concepts of self which was in turn creating their reality. I know this has nothing to do with the 3 dimensional size of the universe, but it did at the time, because it dawned upon me that that’s what those infinite galaxies out there in outer space represented. There was an infinite amount of them, and I’d live and lived through infinite lives, of all species, and that they were my physical representation of each individual life that I lived. Almost as if like my own memoir or record or something life/lives. The love I felt was truly incredible, each and every galaxy and life complete perfection, all equal no matter what they consisted of. I looked at pictures of galaxies like on this thread and was truly astounded at my discovery. Was this why I always looked up to the stars as an ego when wanting to connect with God, was it why everyone looked up to the stars when in despair or when grateful or whatever when thinking of God? A natural instinct, but actually having no idea why we do it. Absolutely convinced at this I suddenly thought I’ve gone completely insane, there’s no coming back from this, I’m done, I’m totally fucked up now and I do not know what to do. They’re gonna lock me up in a mental institute or something. A strange loop type madness seemed to overwhelm me. As the trip started to ease my ego reconstructed itself to its normal everyday structure and all is well and good. I’ll never forget that though and I can’t look up at the night sky in the same way anymore with that materialistic view point on it. As in its sheer size. Although I am still amazed at that, and am totally understanding of the 3 dimensional galaxies and universe, I can’t help but also see it from this other angle at the same time. Maybe it was all delusion, and tbh I’m still trying to integrate that experience and dissect it, contemplate it and make sure I’m not just adding more concepts of bullshit onto myself. I’m not saying any of this is true. But it certainly seemed it at the time