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In 2012, Cornell University mathematician Steven Strogatz wrote an essay for the New York Times titled “Visualizing Vastness,” about the difficulty of grasping large numbers:
“Admit it. You have no real feeling for the size of the solar system. That’s O.K. Nobody else does either. Even knowing the numbers doesn’t help much. If I tell you the Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter and 93,000,000 miles from the Sun, does that give you any sense of the distances involved?