Claudius Ptolemy, whose Almagest was the standard astronomy text from his days till the end of the Middle Ages, when Copernicus, Galileo and Newton brought in a lot of upsetting stuff, stated that in comparison with the distance to the stars the Earth must be considered a point. The stars, in other words, are inaccesibly far away. But nowadays we have exponential notation. The Earth is 1.35 x 10^7 m in diameter, not a point, the Sun is 1.5 x 10^11 m away, and the nearest “fixed” star is 6 x 10^16 m away. So our notation makes the Universe more accessible than it was.
Furthermore, in the Middle Ages it was thought that things beneath the Moon were made of 4 or 5 elements whereas the heavenly bodies were made of something quite different. But nowadays we think that the heavenly bodies are made of the same 100-odd elements we know on Earth, with the possible exception of dark matter. So the Universe is not only smaller, it is homelier.
