Every night, we all gaze up at the magnificent starry sky above us thinking about the vastness and the expanse of space... it really is quite a bit to take in.

I looked round, with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge swelling plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked loudly from a tor behind us.

Tom's out there, somewhere, in the endless expanses of nature. He wanders by day, and as evening approaches, looks for a place where he can set up camp for the night. And so it goes on the next morning. Heaven only knows where he is right at this moment.

Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering.

A bird's-eye view of a large city in Japan presents an appearance quite unlike that presented by any large assemblage of buildings at home. A view of Tokio, for example, from some elevated point reveals a vast sea of roofs, the gray of the shingles and dark slate-color of the tiles, with dull reflections from their surfaces, giving a sombre effect to the whole. The even expanse is broken here and there by the fire-proof buildings, with their ponderous tiled roofs and ridges and pure white or jet-black walls. These, though in color adding to the sombre appearance, form, with the exception of the temples, one of the most conspicuous features in the general monotony. The temples are indeed conspicuous, as they tower far above the pigmy dwellings which surround them. Their great black roofs, with massive ridges and ribs, and grand sweeps and white or red gables, render them striking objects from whatever point they are viewed. Green masses of tree-foliage springing from the numerous gardens add some life to this gray sea of domiciles.

“We have put up major buildings. We’ve put up expanses of concrete. We’ve introduced a completely different vegetation, and in many cases, that’s led to a reduction of biodiversity because a lot of our created habitat is not hospitable to the native species. But the other side of that is that we’ve created new ecological niches and new kinds of habitats,” Heise said.

Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement.

Soon, the expanse of the galaxy became reminiscent of ancient Polynesian migrational waves throughout the Pacific Ocean.

During the First Solar System War, the expanse divided itself into the Inner Alliance and the Outer Alliance. Terra, Luna, and Mars were members of the former. The Jovian moons and Saturnian moons and beyond towards the periphery were members of the latter. The war lasted four years. It heavily devastated Terra and culminated in the surrender of the Inner Alliance.