posted 08-03-2003 10:17 AM         

(Brings it home to me, in a way I can relate to as I do work for the railroad... but we've all had to sit at a crossing at one time or another waiting on a train to pass)

The Universe Train

Imagine that EACH star in the known universe is represented by a single grain of sand.
A thimble would hold ALL the stars VISIBLE on a clear dark summer night.
A dump truck would contain ALL the stars (suns) in the Milky Way, the galaxy in which we reside.

To demonstrate ALL the stars in the known universe, we need to imagine a freight train with hoppers cars filled with sand... each car contains 120 TONS of sand ... remember each grain is one sun.
The train begins to pass in front of us at a level crossing, and as we wait (in our prowlers) we count the hopper cars, roaring by at one per second. The minutes tick by, then the hours, then days. We would have to keep count 24/7... for three years before the train cleared the crossing.
The universe train would be long enough to stretch around the equator of the earth 25 times!