• Question: How big is the biggest thing in the universe, (e.g. star, planet)?

    Asked by eskimojoe to Andrew, Ben, Beth, Heather, Louisa on 18 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Apart from the Universe itself? Well the biggest things, bound by gravity as a distinct structure, are galaxy clusters. These are collections of 100’s of galaxies which span regions of space up to 10 MPc, that is ten mega (million) parsecs. A parsec is a unit used by astronomers and cosmologists to measure astronomical distances it is equivalent to 31 trillion kilometres, 31 000 000 000 000 km, or 19 trillion miles, 19 000 000 000 000 miles.

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      By big, do you mean most massive? This may well be a black hole! But if you mean the largest volume, then it will probably be a red supergiant star. I don’t know the exact figures I’m afraid, but I believe the largest red supergiants would swallow up over a billion stars the same size as our Sun (that’s 1,000,000,000). That’s pretty huge 😀

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