Space

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

To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of the 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 walnut in Johannesburg, and other such dizzying concepts.

The simple truth is that intersteller distances will not fit into the human imagination.

Even light, which travels so fast that it takes most races thousands of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between the stars. It takes eight minutes to journey from the star Sol to the Earth, and four years more to arrive at Sol's nearest steller neighbour, Alpha Proxima.

For light to reach the other side of the galaxy, for it to reach Damogran for instance, takes rather longer: five hundred thousand years.

The record for hitch hiking this distance is just under five years, but you don't get to see much on the way.

If you hold a lungful of air, you can survive in the total vaccum of space for about thirty seconds. However, what with space being the mindboggling size it is, the chances of being picked up by another ship in those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine, to one against.