The headline above is the number of kilometers that light travels in one year. The Milky Way, the galaxy in which Earth is located, has a diameter of 100,000 light years. To get the diameter of the Milky Way, good luck multiplying the 13-digit number, 9,460,730,472,580.8 kilometers (one light year), by the numbers it would take to write out 100,000 light years.

I wish you even better luck in comprehending the distance in even one light year, let alone 100,000.

Is the human being infinitely large or infinitely small?

Where do human beings stand in this universe?

It is certainly easy to feel infinitely small in the face of a single light year, let alone 100,000 light years. By the way, the Milky Way has about 100 million stars, each one dwarfing the Earth in size and measuring up to 50 to 100 times larger than the sun. We see them all in the sky, don’t we? Actually, we don’t. There are only about 3,000 stars in the sky visible to the naked eye. Beyond the naked eye are another 99,997,000 stars in our galaxy alone.

What is 100,000 light years between friends? A paltry sum, surely. For there is a galaxy dubbed “M33” that is some 2.7 million light years away from Earth. I can hardly wait for the calculator screen that is able to spell in full 9,460,730,472,580.8 kilometers (one light year) times 2.7 million light years.

“Big Data” looks infinitely small compared to the distance between “M33” and Earth. There is a reason for the word “astronomical.”

I love the language of the astronomers. Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068 is said to be “relatively nearby” to Earth. Yep, right around the corner. And “globular clusters” of stars contain 100,000 to 1 million stars “packed into” a spherical region of space that is “only” some 100 light years in diameter. Merely a crushed donut, no?

The Earth is warming, we all know. It is, really? In the helium in the core of a dying star, the temperature reaches 100 million degrees centigrade (not a typo).

And those eyeballs of ours. We thought they opened us to an infinity of shades and tones. Think again. Images captured by the Hubble telescope include some 3,000 galaxies, most of which are so faint that they are 4,000,000,000 times too faint to be seen by the naked eye (again, not a typo).

I could faint from these numbers and the realities they express. Is the human being infinitely large or infinitely small?

Astronomy per se is neutral. It can destroy faith or confirm it. Truly, we human beings are infinitesimally small, and so are our tornados and hurricanes —the wind blows at 900 miles per hour near the equator of the planet Netpune.

But truly, can any Jew feel infinitely small as the Jewish people anticipates Shavuot — the approaching anniversary of the revelation of the Torah?

Revelation?

By whom?

By He Who created the light years and the stars and the incomprehensible sizes and distances and speeds and shades; revelation by He Who created the ungrasped heat and wind, and the insatiable thirst of the human being to explore the inexhaustible mysteries of the universe.

Revelation by Whom?

By He of a qualitatively different scale than even the 2.7 million light years between our Earth and galaxy “M33.”

Revelation?

Of what?

Of the access point to what is above, beyond, and qualitatively unlike even the rippling and expanding, incomprehensible universe.

The access point: the Torah.

Is the Torah, like the human being, infinitely large or infinitely small?

The answer shimmers; the answer orbits our minds, its gravitational pull is irresistible.

The answer becomes clear.

On Shavuot.

Cosmology source: Universe in Focus: The Story of the Hubble Telescope, by Stuart Clark (Andromeda).

© IJN 2026