Over the rainbow, beyond the sea, and right at hand, there are wonders untold

When was the last time you looked at the sun—really marveled at its grandeur, immensity and power?

Recently, as I walked on the beach near my home, I realized I’d forgotten my sunglasses. It was late afternoon, and the sun had not yet begun to dip into the horizon. So I trudged on, head down, eyes averted, almost annoyed by the brilliance.

It occurred to me then that I seldom appreciate or am truly awed by a most awesome sight: the sun that rises each day like a benediction, and sets, often in Technicolor splendor, each night.

I take little note of the mighty ocean I see from my window, or the beach, or the millions, if not billions of creatures that inhabit both. Familiarity, in this case, does not breed contempt, but a sense of the commonplace. Sun, moon, sand and stars—here today, here tomorrow, into eternity. Ho-hum.

On the beach that day, I stopped in my tracks (those ephemeral footprints in the sand that mark my own brief passage here), and decided to feel awe. It wasn’t hard. As we all remember from grade school, the blazing orb whose light got in my eyes is 93 million miles away, yet it’s warmed and illuminated our humble planet since the Big Bang, or whatever event set this perfectly balanced universe in motion. That alone is enough to inspire awe.

But otherwise, I didn’t know even basic facts about our sun. So I did a little research (which, as we all know, is just a little too easy these days). I googled the sun, and I share these cool little factoids with you in hopes that you, too, will feel a renewed sense of wonder about the natural phenomena we observe each day, and sometimes take for granted.

Our sun is as big as 11,900 earths (as Jerry Lee Lewis might say, that’s one great ball of fire). And it’s not a solid mass by any means. Called Helios by the ancient Greeks, the sun is made primarily of hydrogen and helium, the lightest elements in the universe.

It occupies 99 percent of all the space in our solar system, and you could fit almost 1 million Earths inside it. But you wouldn’t want to—scientists say the surface temperature of the sun is about 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit, and its core may reach 27 million degrees (I wonder who held the thermometer?).

To compare the size of the two planets, the Earth’s diameter is less than 8,000 miles. Walking the circumference of the sun would be quite a hike—it’s more than 100 times that, or 865,000 miles.

When we were kids, we’d play a little word game to prove our devotion to a pop star, or a favorite food, or a certain girl or boy in math class: “If all the grains of sand on the beach were multiplied by all the drops in the sea, that’s how much I love—insert Bobby Sherman, strawberry ice cream, Kevin who sits in the next row, or what-have-you.”

That’s a whole lotta love. Some years ago, mathematicians at the University of Hawaii spent 1,000 hours counting the grains of sand in a bowl (1 million). From that tedious task, they were able to calculate the number of grains all over the world: 7 quintillion, 500 quadrillion (a number that would look like this: 7,500,000,000,000,000,000). You could also call this number 7.5 billion billion.

If you have a lot of time on your hands and infinite patience (and I do mean infinite!), try this experiment yourself. The formula can be found at www.hawaii.edu/suremath/suremath/jsand.

And did you know there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand in the world? It's estimated there are approximately 70 sextillion stars in the universe. That number looks like this: 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. In our Milky Way alone, there may be 400 billion stars. Crazy to think our city lights and street lights successfully obscure most of them (and also that a little cloud can block the warmth of the sun).

Ever wondered how much water our oceans hold? That number is always variable, as water cycles endlessly from liquid to vapor, from mist to clouds, to rain and snow, to the waters that flow in our rivers, seas, canals and creeks. The not-so-short answer is 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons, or 326 million trillion. If you’re a fan of the metric system, that’s 1,260,000,000,000,000,000,000 liters.

More minutiae: Of all the water on our planet, 98 percent is salt water, and hence, undrinkable. An estimated 100 million species of animals, fish and organisms inhabit the sea. Of course, we human beings, who are about 65 percent water, have about 100 trillion cells (or 10 to the 14th power) in our bodies.

Let’s keep going. On average, the heat of the sun evaporates about 3 trillion gallons of water each second from the ocean (that’s more than 4,400 Olympic-size swimming pools).

And so the cycle continues, forever and ever, ad infinitum, or until the sun burns out – by some estimates, in about 7 billion years, it’ll be lights out.

The late author-astronomer Carl Sagan was known for talking about the “billions upon billions” of dust and stars that make up the galaxies. The idea is impressive, but the numbers are hard to fathom, as few human beings have ever seen a billion of anything (except maybe Oprah Winfrey, when she’s balancing her checkbook).

So look around our world, at the sun, the moon, the sand, the ocean waves. We glance at them every day, and don’t often acknowledge their complexity, or the brilliance of their creation. Look with new eyes, and be inspired.