Something that never ceases to amaze me is the fact that when you look up into the sky, some of the stars that you see do not exist. What you see is light from stars that has traveled through space for millions of years. In the time that the light took to reach us, some of those stars died and have been replaced by new ones that shall become visible millions of years from now. The sheer magnitude of the universe is almost incomprehensible. Even when you know the numbers, it just seems so unreal.

For instance, I cannot fully comprehend the fact that just in our own Milky Way Galaxy, there are millions of stars. Considering that it takes a rocket just under 3 months to reach the planet Mars, can you imagine how long it would take just to move from our Sun to the nearest star, never mind from one end of the galaxy to the other?

The Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977 (currently the furthest man-made object from earth) is just about to finally leave our Solar System after 35 years of traveling. Calculations reveal that if it were traveling towards the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) to our sun, it would need 73,775 years to reach it!

I think my brain is about to explode!!