This is a massive inspiration and source of wonder for me. It also is a major failing of our education. Even highly educated people have no real grasp of the scale of things.

I have this conversation every few years with religious and non religious folk. Both completely miss the scale of the universe and the implications of this scale.

One of the greatest achievements of mankind is the Voyager probes. They are the first manmade objects to ever be sent out of our solar system. Just a few years ago they reached the heliopause... touted as "leaving the solar system" in a myriad of articles. After 45 years as the fastest vehicle ever launched, Voyager 2 is some 130 times farther from the sun than we are. It has traveled far beyond Pluto.

And it is still maybe 300 years from reaching the sphere of comets that surrounds the Sun known as the Oort cloud. And that is just a small fraction of the way to the nearest star.

That's only 4 trips around the equator.

My old Chevy S-10 had enough miles on it to go to the moon and back... but yeah, much farther than that is pretty hard to comprehend!