
Scale of the Universe - chandrew
http://www.htwins.net/scale2/
======
gabaix
"What is a man in the infinite? But to show him another prodigy no less
astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows. Let him take a
mite which in its minute body presents him with parts incomparably more
minute; limbs with their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins,
humours in the blood, drops in the humours, vapours in the drops; let him,
again dividing these last, exhaust his power of thought; let the last point at
which he arrives be that of which we speak, and he will perhaps think that
here is the extremest diminutive in nature. Then I will open before him
therein a new abyss. I will paint for him not only the the visible universe,
but all that he can conceive of nature’s immensity in the enclosure of this
diminished atom. Let him therein see an infinity of universes of which each
has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as in the
visible world; in each earth animals, and at the last the mites, in which he
will come upon all that was in the first, and still find in these others the
same without end and without cessation; let him lose himself in wonders as
astonishing in their minuteness as the others in their immensity; for who will
not be amazed at seeing that our body, which before was imperceptible in the
universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a
world, a whole, in regard to the nothingness to which we cannot attain."

-Blaise Pascal, 1669

~~~
ekianjo
Les vertiges de Pascal. Excellent choice.

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fideloper
Trying to comprehend the scale of the universe is deeply unsettling,
especially when thinking about our minute, insignificant part of it.

Anyway, I hope the startup you're killing yourself over is going well!

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loceng
I disagree that any part of the universe is insignificant. We're all
important.

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kfd1
If everyone is important than no one is.

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talmand
Depends on whether you are comparing everyone to each other or to something
outside of the group of everyone. I could imagine we would say that everyone
is important as compared to a typical stray photon with a duel-identity
crisis.

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giantrobothead
When I was a little kid, I used to lay in my bed, in the dark, and think about
the size of the room around me. Then I'd think of the size of my house, then
the size of my hometown, then the size of my home state, then the size of the
United States, then the size of the planet, and so on until I couldn't
conceive of the scale of what I was trying to envision.

It was at once exciting and absolutely terrifying. This doesn't quite capture
that feeling, but it's still pretty neat.

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fideloper
It is terrifying, which is interesting to analyze. Why should it be? Must be
something deeply ingrained in us humans.

~~~
jurjenh
I wonder if it is an instinctive reaction:

a large new space has a lot of unknowns -> some of these unknowns could be
dangerous -> a very large new space has a lot more unknowns -> very large
spaces are to be feared.

This is based on nothing more than my imagination, but seems like a sensible
evolutionary precaution.

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danso
Everytime I see one of these things, I think of "Restaurant at the End of the
Universe" and the Total Perspective Vortex:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex#Total_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex#Total_Perspective_Vortex)

> _The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a
> fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore... which
> is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as horrific as it is. When you are
> put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire
> unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a
> microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here."_

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thangalin
A few of my 3D renders on the topic of scale:

\- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star-
sizes.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star-sizes.jpg)

\- [http://davidjarvis.ca/dave/gallery/star-
sizes/](http://davidjarvis.ca/dave/gallery/star-sizes/)

It is incredible to consider that the largest known stars are the size of the
Solar System.

~~~
deletes
The pictures of the largest stars are not realistic, since they show a clear
border of a solid object. In reality the out parts are more like a very thin
atmosphere. The average density of the whole star is almost vacuum( 1000 times
less than earth atmosphere ).

~~~
thangalin
True; an entirely accurate model would be quite time-consuming. For example, a
red giant's photosphere is not spherical.

Niel deGrasse Tyson offered the following feedback:

> If the Sun's Wien's law curve peaked just a few Angstroms over from it's
> current value would you have illustrated it green? But of course there are
> no green stars even though the curve peaks there for plenty of them.

> The width of the visible part of the spectrum is so narrow compared with the
> full-breadth energy distribution of the stars that the fractional difference
> between one color and the next is quite small. The consequence is that we
> don't actually see all the colors you show.

\-
[http://www.astro.uvic.ca/~tatum/stellatm.html](http://www.astro.uvic.ca/~tatum/stellatm.html)

\-
[http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9604b/](http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9604b/)

\-
[http://herschel.cf.ac.uk/results/betelgeuse](http://herschel.cf.ac.uk/results/betelgeuse)

\-
[http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/starold_2.html](http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/starold_2.html)

\-
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=wien+displacement+law](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=wien+displacement+law)

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OhRly
An early and retrogasmic infinity narrative from 1977 is Charles & Ray Eames'
POWERS OF 10 --
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ti9BJiyvs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ti9BJiyvs)

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treeface
Been posted in various forms numerous times over the years.

[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=scale+of+the+u...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=scale+of+the+universe)

At least this is the more accurate version at the top end of the scale.

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fdej
Very well done.

It actually always baffles me that so much of biology takes place on scales
that are very close to human perception. When looking at microscope images,
the sizes of things become very abstract. Atoms and cells might as well be of
the same size.

But a 0.1 mm object is perceptible to the naked eye. This resolution is just
an order of magnitude too crude to see individual cells (the human egg cell is
just barely visible to the naked eye), and two orders of magnitude cruder than
the resolution limit of optical microscopes. Imagine how differently science
might have progressed if we had known about cells before inventing the
microscope!

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knowaveragejoe
Not a plug for Nikon, but their version of this concept is far superior IMO:

[http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/universcale/](http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/universcale/)

~~~
hadem
I disagree. The user interface is poorly designed. It immediately slides
everything past in a blur. I wanted to look from smallest to largest, but when
I click the icon to go to the smallest scale, I'm asked to "restart". If I use
the scroll wheel and get to the smallest scale, I'm also asked to restart.
When I restart, I'm shown the blur of objects again and have to go through the
entire process over again.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Late, but - while it's not optimal, it's far superior to the submitted one, if
for no other reason than the continuous scale reference.

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ForHackernews
Obligatory IBM Powers of Ten (1977):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0)

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chm
I liked the first one, and I think this version is very good looking too. Good
job.

I suggest you add a "play" button, where it scrolls from one end to the other
at a slow pace, much like in the first iteration. It's nice to sit back and
enjoy the view.

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glomph
I always liked
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0)

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izzydata
I wish this page worked. Might just be on my end, but I really want to see
this. I love the overwhelming feeling of insignificance.

~~~
paultannenbaum
Looks like it was built with Flash, so that could be it. Its a really cool
project if you do get a chance to check it out on another device.

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biot
Is there not a virtual world which can represent a contiguous series of
locations larger than that of Minecraft?

~~~
deletes
You can try I-War 2:Edge of Chaos( space action-simulator with newton physics
and inertia ) where the total contiguous world map is around 10^20 km( at
least ). But of course most of it is empty as the solar system takes a
relatively small place in the center of the map. And similarly to Minecraft if
you teleport yourself into the high numbers you will get experience floating
point accuracy problems, and weird things start to happen.

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TeMPOraL
> _if you teleport yourself into the high numbers you will get experience
> floating point accuracy problems, and weird things start to happen_

Weird; in case of a space sim this should be a simple thing to fix (octree,
for example).

~~~
deletes
You can't reach such areas without cheating or flying for years, so there is
nothing to fix.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Space Kraken, the punisher of cheaters? :).

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intull
You must try "Celestia"
([http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/)).
Its a real-time visualization and simulation of space! OF SPACE! You can see
the entire known universe with this!

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Fr0styMatt
For anyone with access to an Oculus Rift, I can't recommend "Titans of Space"
highly enough. It brought me to tears. The sense of scale you get is utterly
amazing.

[http://www.crunchywood.com/](http://www.crunchywood.com/)

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TheSOB888
That largest bacterium's size is incorrect. It shows a chain of them as 750um,
but in reality just one can become that large. In the picture, they look as
big as a human ovum at 120um, but obviously that's not accurate.

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fideloper
You _hope_ it's not accurate :D

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TheSOB888
I was saying that the bacterium is -larger- than the ovum. By a factor of 6.

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kamaal
Actually that being the case why isn't it possible that the universe itself is
just a planck scale like entity inside something bigger than us?

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aswanson
There was a link here awhile ago to see visualization s of known. Star
systems. Anyone recall that link? Would wait love ro take another tour...

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shultays
What does it mean by "lengths shorter than this are not confirmed"? We are not
sure about the size of objects smaller than it?

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mikepmalai
Turn off the music and scroll through playing Daft Punk's Recognizer on the
Tron soundtrack.

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dlsym
Frequent repost. Old. Karmadecay.

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fauria
Existential Horror masterpiece.

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neduma
Wow.

