Our Solar System is about 16 billion km, or 10 billion miles, or 15 light hours across. Light travels ~ 300,000 km/sec or ~1.1 billion km/hour
Edge-on view of a spiral galaxy. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, would look very much like it to an outside visitor
IRAS telescope image of Pictoris, a solar system in the making? Red = solid material.
The critical role of Earths Moon in helping life start and be sustained on Earth
Moon adds stability to Earths rotation, so less extreme seasons Moon provides ocean tides on Earth promotes early life in shallow pools Moon slows Earths rate of rotation longer days
Old parts of the Moon are very heavily cratered. This indicates that early in the history of the Solar System the Moon and, by inference, Earth were very heavily bombarded by highly destructive bullets from space (asteroids; comets)
Oldest rocks on Earth are ~3.85 Gy old. Older rocks were destroyed by impacts and erosion: There is nothing left of the earliest period of Earth history!
The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was ~ 20 kt (1 kt = 1,000 t of TNT; 1 mt = 1,000 kt). Meteor Crater Arizona = 3 mt = 150 Hiroshima bombs.
Planets outside our Solar System, orbiting other stars, in multiples of Jupiter masses (Mj). Conclusion: Most planets have masses equal to, or a few times, the mass of Jupiter
Planets outside our Solar System, orbiting other stars, plotted as a function of the distance of their star. Conclusion: Most planets orbit extremely closely to their stars!