How Big Is God?
Size Matters
Any discussion about really big things invariably includes the number of sand grains on Earth. It’s impossible to calculate the exact number, but with certain reasonable assumptions we can get a rough estimate.
Assuming a typical sand grain is 0.5 millimeter across, it has a volume of 0.0000000001 cubic meters. Restricting ourselves just to Earth’s beaches and deserts, (down to depths of one meter and three meters, respectively), we’re looking at a total volume of 100,000,000,000,000 cubic meters. That comes to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one trillion, trillion) grains of sand.
That’s big!
How about the number of stars in the observable universe? (There’s an entire universe beyond the one we can see, but I’ll leave that fascinating story for another time.)