It is difficult – if not impossible – for finite beings to comprehend the infinite. God’s universe is so big, man must continue to invent new ways to describe the distances. Space is so vast, distances are commonly described in terms of lightyears.
Lightspeed, the distance light can travel in a year, is the speed limit for any speed – be it microwaves, radiowaves, etc. No human can travel at lightspeed because a human body (and or spacecraft) has mass. To be clear, one would have be BE light to travel at the speed of light. Interestingly, scientists cannot explain how the furthermost galaxies are somehow moving away from us at the speed of light.
The distance light travels in a year is about six trillion miles (6,000,000,000,000). This is around 11,000,000 miles per minute or 186,000 miles per second. In just one second, at the speed of light, light can travel around our world seven times. It takes light from the sun 8 minutes to reach earth, because it is 93,000,000 miles away. If the sun suddenly burned out and disappeared, we wouldn’t realize it for 8 minutes.
In the fastest manned spaceship we can build today (c30,000 MPH), it would take 20,000 years to travel the distance of just one lightyear. If you rode in a ship which travels as fast as Voyager (c. 80,000) MPH), you’d be on board for 40,000 years in order to reach the first star system. If you could go there at the speed of light, you’d be bored for 4.5 years….because Alpha Centuri is 25 trillion miles away (25,000,000,000,000).
Astronomers have assured us there are more thn 2 trillion galaxies. Within our own little Milky Way galaxy there are more than 500 solar systems. To go from one end of the Milky Way to the other would take you 100,000 years – at lightspeed.
The facts are mindboggling. Even secular scientists are forced to call what is beyond the observable universe “infinity”. But let’s add this to the mix. If there are 2 trillion galaxies within our universe, and the universe has no edge, why could there not be billions or trillions of entire universes out there? Who ever imagined the word “universe” could be plural?
We know God so loved the inhabitants of our world so much He sacrificed His Son for our sins (John 3:16). Whatever is beyond us exists so that human beings can praise God for His creation. If they fail to do so, it is not the fault of our Creator.