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Comment by alex_c | Hacker News Reader

I still think Douglas Adams explained it best.

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

In a strange way, I think it gets the point across better than a precise description like "one hundred billion galaxies" ever could.

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This was the one for me: "To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of distances between the stars, better minds than the one responsible for the Guide's introduction have faltered. Some invite you to consider for a moment a peanut in reading and a small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such dizzying concepts."

Like TP, he had an amazing penchant for explaining the unexplainable :)

TP ?

I'd guess Terry Pratchett.

Ah, ok, I was thinking along the lines of Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking...

Terry Pratchett is entertaining but he can't hold a candle to Douglas Adams. It's more like he's found a formula and markets the hell out of it (he's a good businessman though!).

Terry Pratchett is correct. The man has created an imaginary universe, interlinked and interweaved across dozens of stories. His definitions on quantum and time are interesting and amusing at the same time. His frustration at the limitation of language with regard to these subjects too: "It is very difficult to explain quantum in a language designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is". Apologies for the OT post :)

If our language (I'm thinking English, I'd be interested to hear of variations) is for telling people where the ripe fruit is, how come we don't have specific [common] words for so-unripe-it-will-give-you-indigestion, not-quite-ripe, ripe-enough, still-needs-to-ripen and so-ripe-you-can't-pick-it - they'd be very useful in foraging situations?

I guess /auf Deutsch/ they'd all just be compound words?

I could make some up in German. But that's not fundamentally different from placing adjectives in front of your words in English.

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