
If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system - ZeljkoS
http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
======
rackforms
Neat! My favorite way to show the impossibly large scale of our universe:
[http://spaceengine.org/](http://spaceengine.org/). Set your speed to 10 light
years _per second_ and watch the Andromeda galaxy just sit there.

Also fun to see how slow even the speed of light is. Start at the sun and head
for earth. Once you reach Earth marvel at how fast you had been going.

Head towards Jupiter and, once again, marvel at how impossibly slow your going
compared to even the nearest background stars.

~~~
akvadrako
This is inaccurate. At even 1g acceleration Andromeda is just 28 years away.
At 10 light years per second you would have passed it many many years ago.

~~~
herbstein
Uhm, no? He's talking about a constant speed of 1 LY/s, and not an
acceleration.

~~~
akvadrako
And what he said was nonsense; 10 LY/s is faster than light; you must be a
hypothetical particle with some crazy properties and our math really breaks
down at that point.

In space you need to think in terms of relative velocities less than _c_ and
acceleration. To get a reasonable sense of how far away Andromeda is consider
how long it will take to get there, which is just a few years.

------
schoen
In Florianópolis, Brazil, there's a thing called Projeto Helius where someone
has placed plaques along the waterfront showing the locations of the planets,
to scale. They start off deceptively close together for the inner planets,
just a few minutes' walk apart, but then it _really_ takes a while to reach
the outer planets.

[http://www.1000dias.com/rodrigo/avenida-beira-mar-sistema-
so...](http://www.1000dias.com/rodrigo/avenida-beira-mar-sistema-solar-e-a-
ponte/)

I walked as far as Neptune but, like the author of the above blog post, didn't
continue on to Pluto. (It isn't depicted on the map, but I just checked and
all of these markers are Ingress portals/Pokestops, so it's easy to find other
people's maps that show them. Pluto is a little south of the end of the park
there.)

~~~
anonymousiam
Pluto's orbit is so eccentric that perigee (the point closest to the sun) is
actually inside the orbit of Neptune.

~~~
anonymousiam
And of course I stupidly used the wrong term for perihelion. Perigee refers to
the closest point to EARTH not the SUN.

~~~
kbutler
But at this distance, it is the same... -- Robert Heinlein

A little less the same than Heinlein's original context, though Pluto was
involved there, too. Anybody catch the reference?

------
overcast
Every time I see these types of visualizations, I get the feeling of sadness,
that we'll never visit other worlds outside of our own. The immensity of space
is just incomprehensible. The closest star system Alpha Centauri, is over FOUR
light years away. Time dilation will ensure that we will never again see
whomever we send out into deep space.

~~~
javajosh
Like compound interest, constant acceleration is powerful. 10/m/s/s gets you
to 30,000 m/s in 3,000s. That's .1c in less than an hour. The energy required
is mv^2, m being the mass of your vehicle, and you can annihilate anti-matter
to get, theoretically, Mc^2 of energy out of it. That means you can get to .1c
with M=mv^2/c^2=.1^2 or 1% of your vehicle mass of anti-matter. That's a small
enough number to leave a lot of wiggle room.

(Much smaller, and more realistic, accelerations are possible over longer
periods of time, but require using the use of relativistic equations of
motion.)

~~~
ziedaniel1
I think you mixed up m/s and km/s. The speed of light is 300,000,000 m/s, so
30,000 m/s is only .0001c. At 1g, it actually takes a month to reach .1c.
(Still, your point stands.)

~~~
javajosh
Thank you for the correction! 3 OOM off is...embarrassing.

~~~
sjwright
So you'll be mortified to learn you were off by 4 OOM.

~~~
javajosh
I would be, but I wasn't. Last I checked 1km = 1000m.

------
mtkd
_It’s easy to disregard nothingness because there’s no thought available to
encapsulate it.

There’s no metaphor that fits because, by definition, once the nothingness
becomes tangible, it ceases to exist.

We’d be surrounded by this stuff that our minds weren’t built to understand._

aside from being a great visualisation - it's really well annotated

~~~
nonbel
>"We’d be surrounded by this stuff that our minds weren’t built to
understand."

It is interesting to compare this to what was believed during the dawn of the
scientific revolution, eg Isaac Newton's attitude (that the universe was built
for humans to understand it). Both positions are speculative, but asserted as
facts in their time with far reaching effects.

~~~
tossaway1
Interesting that you state Isaac Newton's attitude as fact. When I Google
"isaac newton universe built for humans to understand" unquoted, I don't find
any support for this statement. In fact, this thread ends up as one of the top
hits.

~~~
nonbel
That was more a paraphrase of the impression you get reading him. It was
surprisingly difficult to find some kind of quote from him on the
intelligibility of nature (it looks like it is one of those topics that has
generated a lot of low quality commentary). Here is the closest I could find
for now:

>"Newton refashioned the world governed by an interventionist God into a world
crafted by a God that designs along rational and universal principles.[55]
These principles were available for all people to discover, allowed man to
pursue his own aims fruitfully in this life, not the next, and to perfect
himself with his own rational powers.[56]"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newton)

You can also read his principles of philosophy and general scholium to get an
idea of his views. You will see he believed in a creator that made the
universe as simple as possible:

[https://isaacnewton.ca/newtons-general-
scholium/](https://isaacnewton.ca/newtons-general-scholium/)

[http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/newton-
princ.asp](http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/newton-princ.asp)

------
mwidell
In Sweden we have a visualization where Ericsson Globe, the worlds largest
spherical building, represents the sun:
[http://www.swedensolarsystem.se/en/](http://www.swedensolarsystem.se/en/)

------
paulvs
I like how the number 42 is weaved into this.

At 177 light minutes into the journey, there is the following message:

 _Emptiness is actually everywhere. It’s something like
99.9999999999999999999958% of the known universe._

leaving 4.2E-21 or 0.0000000000000000000042% non-emptiness in the universe.

I can't find any sources backing up this figure, but I wonder if it was the
author's intent to smuggle in a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.

Edit: Just saw the second reference to this at 208 light minutes.

------
scandox
This is well executed but I found myself increasingly dissatisfied with the
genially philosophical textual content and craving the nihilist edition of the
same thing. In a way it's a wasted opportunity to generate a day of healthy
despair.

------
Imagenuity
"If the proton of a hydrogen atom was the size of the sun on this map, we
would need 11 more of these maps to show the average distance to the
electron."

Emptiness, both atomic and interstellar, is inconceivably vast.

------
rwmj
This would be a lot better if it used vertical scrolling and not sideways
scrolling.

The BBC did this site about director James Cameron exploring the depths of the
ocean, and I think it works really well with vertical scrolling:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-
environment-17013285](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17013285)

~~~
TheSwordsman
I think vertical scrolling worked well in that case because it was used to
display depth. The information you are displaying is literally about going
down. Horizontal scrolling feels more natural to me here because the point is
to show how empty and vast the area between planets is.

The downside is that it's an experience that admittedly only works if you're
using a trackpad, or a mouse with good side-scrolling support. So people with
laptops / trackpad mice are probably okay.

~~~
ajmurmann
A little known fact seems to be that if you hold Option (or was it command?)
on OS X while using the mouse wheel, you scroll horizontally instead of
vertically. Found that out by accident.

~~~
mamon
Another little know fact is that you can go through this map just by holding
Right arrow.

------
bikamonki
In this clever visualization, space is 1702774 pixels wide. At 1366 pixels
width of my screen, the printed version would be 1246 screens-long, that is
roughly 500 meters (0.3 miles). I am able to scroll horizontally the total
screen-width in roughly 200ms, that is, my mouse can travel at 2500 m/s.

------
DanBC
I love this.

Here's another visualisation, using a soccer ball and American football
pitches. It includes "planet 9", which is a staggering distance away.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR5VJo5ifdE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR5VJo5ifdE)

------
ilaksh
I was reading the comments at the top. One said something about 7 months to
get to Mars being 2,000 feature-length movies of waking hours. I know its old
news, but I remember having a 20MB hard drive back in the day. Now you could
easily fit 2000+ movies on one 10TB hard drive that costs less than $500.

------
erikrothoff
That was beautiful. I got one of those auto-of-body moments contemplating life
and meaning while scrolling.

~~~
DavideNL
...reminds me of the "Overview effect" :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect)

~~~
teddyh
“ _The fool on the hill sees the sun going down, and the eyes in his head sees
the world spinning ’round._ ”

– Beatles, _The Fool on the Hill_ (1967)

------
pikzen
The absolute worst thing with this website is thinking that scrolling with
your mouse is way too slow, turning on light speed and realising it goes
slower.

Well, we're not getting to another solar system in my lifetime, it's fine.

------
brett40324
On a phone i scrolled basically as fast as possible all the way to the end,
stopping for a few seconds at each dialog, and it was at least a 10 minute
ride. I loved the wit along the way!

------
Faaak
I would love to be able to print it to scale on A4 paper (with white
background of course). Posted on a long wall the results would be very
interesting ;-)

~~~
musgravepeter
If you go to
[http://www.astro.princeton.edu/universe/](http://www.astro.princeton.edu/universe/)
you can find print-outs of the entire universe all the way to the microwave
background (log scale).

They're very cool.

------
toss1941
Very cool. One suggestion to give an even better perspective is to...
literally give a first person perspective from the planets on what the sun and
other planets looks like in the distance. So on Mercury, the sun would look
relative large compared to venus, earth, mars, etc.

~~~
mattvot
Something close to this is this video from the perspective of the earth,
showing the planets at the same distance from earth to the moon.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usYC_Z36rHw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usYC_Z36rHw)

------
lacampbell
Speaking of tedious, here is my nitpick ;)

As I was scrolling I stopped to read the little messages about how empty stuff
was, etc. Which kind of distorted my view of how far apart things actually
were, as my scrolling slowed as I stopped to read them.

Other than that, really cool.

~~~
zfedoran
Interesting facts, but they ended up removing me from the experience as well.
Maybe I scrolled too fast?

.essay { display: none; }

------
CarolineW
It's nice to see this again. The revelation that space is so big and empty is
one that more people need to see. I especially recommend finding and visiting
one of the scale models of the Solar System. I visited and walked the one in
Melbourne, Australia.

They are referenced in previous discussions of this particular item. Here are
some:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341690)
(178 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13790954](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13790954)
(20 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7551423](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7551423)
(17 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13217129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13217129)
(11 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12038584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12038584)
(4 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13419190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13419190)
(3 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13233679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13233679)
(1 comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876633)
(1 comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8834512](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8834512)
(1 comment)

There are other submissions without any comments - for completeness I thought
I'd include those that I could find - there may be others:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13285043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13285043)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12870694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12870694)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12280935](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12280935)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12273629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12273629)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10943525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10943525)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240476)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9469999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9469999)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7728435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7728435)

------
ams6110
Illustrates how amazing it is that we can even detect planets orbiting other
stars. Almost like detecting a grain of black sand on a beach of white.

------
TheSwordsman
>I guess this is why most maps of the solar system aren't drawn to scale.

>It's not hard to draw the planets.

>It's the empty space that's the problem.

------
yokisan
I had an existential crisis after scrolling 50 times and revealing nothing but
more _background-color: #000000;_

------
reactor
"Most space charts leave out the most significant part – all the space". True
to that.

------
alyandon
While this is neat, it scrolls way too slow via mouse and keyboard.

Edit: Ah, autoscrolling works.

------
d--b
this is awesome. It gives a much better idea of scale than any log-based
thing.

------
evertonfuller
I loved your comedic quips. Nice job overall!

------
d0vs
The moon is actually 2 pixels on my screen

------
Fuzzwah
I wanted to read all the snippets of text but didn't have time to scroll
through the whole map, so I selected all, copied and pasted.....

#############

That was about 10 million km (6,213,710 mi) just now.

Pretty empty out here.

Here comes our first planet...

As it turns out, things are pretty far apart.

We’ll be coming up on a new planet soon.

Sit tight.

Most of space is just space.

Halfway home.

Destination: Mars! It would take about seven months to travel this distance in
a spaceship. Better be some good in-flight entertainment. In case you're
wondering, you'd need about 2000 feature-length movies to occupy that many
waking hours.

Sit back and relax.

Jupiter is more than 3 times as far as we just traveled.

When are we gonna be there? Seriously.

When are we gonna be there? This is where we might at least see some asteroids
to wake us up. Too bad they're all too small to appear on this map.

I spy, with my little eye... something black.

If you were on a road trip, driving at 75mi/hr, it would have taken you over
500 years to get here from earth.

All these distances are just averages, mind you. The distance between planets
really depends on where the two planets are in their orbits around the sun.

So if you're planning on taking a trip to Jupiter, you might want to use a
different map.

If you plan it right, you can actually move relatively quickly between
planets.

The New Horizons space craft that launched in 2006 only took 13 months to get
to Jupiter.

Don't worry. It'll take a lot less than 13 months to scroll there.

Pretty close to Jupiter now.

Sorry. That was a lie before.

Now we really are pretty close.

Lots of time to think out here...

Pop the champagne! We just passed 1 billion km.

I guess this is why most maps of the solar system aren't drawn to scale. It's
not hard to draw the planets. It's the empty space that's a problem.

Most space charts leave out the most significant part – all the space.

We're used to dealing with things at a much smaller scale than this.

When it comes to things like the age of the earth, the number of snowflakes in
Siberia, the national debt...

Those things are too much for our brains to handle.

We need to reduce things down to something we can see or experience directly
in order to understand them.

We're always trying to come up with metaphors for big numbers.

Even so, they never seem to work.

Let's try a few metaphors anyway...

You would need 886 of these screens lined up side-by-side to show this whole
map at once.

If this map was printed from a quality printer (300 pixels per inch) the earth
would be invisible, and the width of the paper would need to be 475 feet.

475 feet is about 1 and 1/2 football fields.

Even though we don’t really understand them, a lot can happen within these
massive lengths of time and space. A drop of water can carve out a canyon.

An amoeba can become a dolphin.

A star can collapse on itself.

It’s easy to disregard nothingness because there’s no thought available to
encapsulate it.

There’s no metaphor that fits because, by definition, once the nothingness
becomes tangible, it ceases to exist.

It’s a good thing we have these tiny stars and planets, otherwise we’d have no
point of reference at all.

We’d be surrounded by this stuff that our minds weren’t built to understand.

All this emptiness really could drive you nuts.

For instance, if you’re in a sensory deprivation tank for too long, your brain
starts to make things up.

You see and hear things that aren’t there.

The brain isn't built to handle "empty." "Sorry, Humanity," says Evolution.

"What with all the jaguars trying to eat you, the parasites in your fur, and
the never-ending need for a decent steak, I was a little busy.

I didn’t exactly have time to come up with a way to conceive of vast stretches
of nothingness." Neurologically speaking, we really only deal with matter of a
certain size, and energy of a few select wavelengths.

For everything else, we have to make up mental models and see if they match up
to the tiny shreds of hard evidence that actually feel real.

The mental models provided by mathematics are extremely helpful when trying to
make sense of these vast distances, but still...

Abstraction is pretty unsatisfying.

When you hear people talk about how, "there’s more to this universe than our
minds can conceive of" it's usually a way to get you to go along with a half-
baked plot point about UFOs or super-powers in a sci-fi series that you're
watching late at night when you can’t get to sleep.

Even when Shakespeare wrote: "There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” – he's basically trying to
give us a loophole to make the ghost in the story more believable.

But all this empty space, these things of a massive scale, really are more
than our minds can conceive of.

The maps and metaphors fail to do them justice.

You look at one tiny dot, then you look for the next tiny dot.

Everything in between is inconsequential and fairly boring.

Emptiness is actually everywhere.

It’s something like 99.9999999999999999999958% of the known universe.

Even an atom is mostly empty space.

If the proton of a hydrogen atom was the size of the sun on this map, we would
need 11 more of these maps to show the average distance to the electron.

Some theories say all this emptiness is actually full of energy or dark matter
and that nothing can truly be empty...

but come on, only ordinary matter has any meaning for us.

You could safely say the universe is a "whole lotta nothing." If so much of
the universe is made up of emptiness, what does that mean to people like us,
living on a tiny speck in the middle of all of it? Is the known universe
99.9999999999999999999958% empty? Or is it 0.0000000000000000000042% full?
With so much emptiness, aren't stars, planets, and people just glitches in an
otherwise elegant and uniform nothingness, like pieces of lint on a black
sweater? But without the tiny dots for it to stretch between, there would be
no emptiness to measure, and for that matter, no one around to measure it.

You might say that so much emptiness makes the tiny bits of matter that much
more meaningful - simply by the fact that, against all odds, they aren't
empty.

If you're drowning in the middle of the ocean, a floating piece of driftwood
is a pretty big deal.

What if trillions of stars and planets were crammed right next to each other?
They wouldn't be special at all.

It seems like we are both pathetically insignificant, and miraculously
important at the same time.

Whether you more strongly feel the monumental significance of tiny things or
the massive void between them depends on who you are, and how your brain
chemistry is balanced at a particular moment.

We walk around with miniature, emotional versions of the universe inside of
us.

It's reassuring to know that no matter how depressingly bleak or ridiculously
momentous we feel, the universe, judging by its current structure, seems well
aware of both extremes.

The fact that you're here, in the midst of all this nothing, is pretty amazing
when you stop and think about it.

Congratulations on making it this far.

Might as well stop now.

We'll need to scroll through 6,771 more maps like this before we see anything
else.

------
jeremyleach
Simply brilliant!

