Geometry is the best way to do this as it measures things in terms of volume and distance. Space is so vast that it would take 9 million monkeys, who got a “C” or better in high school geometry, over six billion years to map out and measure the entire universe. They started only twenty years ago so we still have some time to wait until they provide us with the maps and numbers. Until then we’ll just use computers to figure out the roughly two percent of the universe that we have discovered.

For those of you who don’t know what a computer is, it’s kind of like a monkey only it can’t smoke cigarettes and throw poo at your nice shirts. Some computers say it is a circle, this universe, while others state it is more of a square. Only one says it is a trapezoid, but the others laugh at it and say that’s basically a square. The rest of the computers have windows vista installed so every time they get to the number 14, they crash and have to be rebooted, which takes two hours, so their data is just added to the monkey’s homework, which upsets them greatly because they already have 5,999,999,980 years to go for the current assignment.

So we know roughly two percent of the universe (how they know that I don’t know. I figure you got to know a hundred percent before you can say that you know of only two percent, but maybe they’re just trying to impress other scientist and mathematicians) but how do you measure the distance between one star and another. You just can’t say “take a right at Orion then go about 40 million katrillion zillion miles and you’ll see it next to the tree that looks like Eddie Murphy”. It just doesn’t work like that. So instead we use scientific notation to make big math words smaller and to confuse the monkeys adding another million years to their map workload. Say a star is 4,000 light years away. Now if you told an astrologist to focus on that star there 4,000 light years away, he would stare at you and ask you “how the hell did you get through the locks on the observatory”?

But if it was the exact same situation and you asked the astronomer to but a fix on the star that’s 0.4 x 10 to the fourth power away, he would think you’re just another one of his scientific collogues, until he notices your Pantera t-shirt. That’s how astronomers and scientist communicate with each other. They say things like “I had a burger and it cost me 1.432 times ten squared”, or “I”m having a ten to the fifteenth power kind of day (an okay day)’! The number 10 to the 80th power is supposedly greater than all the atoms in the universe, but when you ask the guy who counted all those atoms, he just foams on his straight jacket and mumbles something about those damn dirty apes. The scientific notation was developed to keep true mathematicians in the fields of science and keeping regular people behind the counter at Burger King.

So in closing math is good and math is great, especially in matter such as the universe and monkeys. So next time you look up into the starry night think “numbers”, because that’s all it really is floating up there. And for every star you see there are at least twenty monkeys screaming and pulling out their hair trying to remember the right-angle theorem they forgot way back in high school.