I never cease to be blown away by images of the Perseus cluster - planet earth is but a tiny spec in one solar system in an enormous spiral galaxy. In this single image there are scores of galaxies.
“It’s hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers. I said “billion” many times on the Cosmos television series, which was seen by a great many people. But I never said “billions and billions.” For one thing, it’s too imprecise. How many billions are “billions and billions”? A few billion? Twenty billion? A hundred billion? “Billions and billions” is pretty vague. When we reconfigured and updated the series, I checked—and sure enough, I never said it.”
― Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life & Death at the Brink of the Millennium
“It’s hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers. I said “billion” many times on the Cosmos television series, which was seen by a great many people. But I never said “billions and billions.” For one thing, it’s too imprecise. How many billions are “billions and billions”? A few billion? Twenty billion? A hundred billion? “Billions and billions” is pretty vague. When we reconfigured and updated the series, I checked—and sure enough, I never said it.” ― Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life & Death at the Brink of the Millennium