To comprehend the relative scales in the universe, it is useful to consider entities and structures that exist across this extensive range. The known universe spans about 93 billion light-years in diameter, which is approximately \(8.8 \times 10^{26}\) meters. Conversely, the electron, a subatomic particle, is incredibly small, with an effective “size” often considered to be on the order of 10 femtometers or \(1 \times 10^{-15}\) meters, though it is typically treated as a point particle with no true size.
By determining what lies at an intermediate scale, we can examine several examples that are neither subatomic nor cosmic in size, offering a diverse middle ground in terms of magnitude:
Human Scale (Meters to Kilometers): Objects in the human-scale range cover sizes from a few meters, like a person (average height about 1.7 meters), to geographic features, such as mountains or small countries, spanning several kilometers.
Planetary Scale (Thousands of Kilometers): Planets like Earth have diameters around 12,742 kilometers. This represents a larger scale where celestial body size charts fall within this range.
Astronomical Bodies (Hundreds to Thousands of Gigameters): Stars like the Sun, measuring about 1.39 million kilometers in diameter or around \(1.39 \times 10^{9}\) meters, and larger stars or even smaller moons and planets offer an intermediary scale.
Galactic Scale (Hundreds of Thousands of Light-years): Galaxies, with sizes like the Milky Way’s approximate diameter of 105,000 light-years or \(1 \times 10^{21}\) meters, bridge between more localized celestial bodies and the universe as a whole.
Micro- to Nanoscopic Objects: In scientific study, cells vary from micrometers (\(1 \times 10^{-6}\) meters) to nanometers (\(1 \times 10^{-9}\) meters), representing biological structures larger than atoms but far smaller than everyday objects.
Molecular and Atomic Scale: Molecules and individual atoms span the range of 0.1 to 0.5 nanometers (\(1 \times 10^{-10}\) meters), illustrating a level between macroscopic and purely subatomic structures.
In essence, identifying something “in between” encompasses a vast range of scales. The ultimate middle between the vastness of the universe and the minuteness of an electron would logically reside somewhere in these intermediate levels of existence, depending on the context and reference point chosen.