The Scale of the Universe
February 10, 2012 11:01 AM   Subscribe

The Scale of The Universe 2 (give it a minute to load)
posted by backseatpilot (25 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
I feel like this might be a double but I don't have time to search.
posted by Defenestrator at 11:23 AM on February 10, 2012


double for version 2? I've seen version one listed before...version 2 is a new one on me. If it's anything like v1, I can't wait.

Loading.....
posted by qwickset at 11:53 AM on February 10, 2012


version 1....previously
posted by qwickset at 11:55 AM on February 10, 2012


Wow. Thank you. ♥
posted by Lynsey at 12:00 PM on February 10, 2012


Had seen 1.0, but this is better than I remember it being. Very cool. (Though Io looks like it's wearing desert camouflage.)
posted by benito.strauss at 12:06 PM on February 10, 2012


As I zoomed down to the smallest lengths I was curious as to what would be at the end a wondered if it might be this.
posted by benito.strauss at 12:14 PM on February 10, 2012 [6 favorites]


I was fully prepared to get to the smallest size and for it to say something like "ITS UR PEN0R LULZ" but was pleasantly surprised to find that its a serious and cool illustration.

I feel anxiety when I start zooming out to the truly enormous sizes and I don't know why.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:27 PM on February 10, 2012


It's a great big universe and we're all really puny. We're just tiny little specks, about the size of Mickey Rooney!

This was so fun to play with. Thanks!
posted by xedrik at 12:28 PM on February 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


A brane is smaller than a Planck? This explains things.
posted by 3FLryan at 12:28 PM on February 10, 2012


If you crank "Do You Realize??" really loud and whip the scale slider back and forth for 30 seconds, Wayne Coyne will manifest next to you and compliment you on what you're wearing.
posted by COBRA! at 12:34 PM on February 10, 2012 [9 favorites]


Woah, Minecraft world is fracking huge!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:35 PM on February 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Much ado about [nothing].
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:00 PM on February 10, 2012


I feel anxiety when I start zooming out to the truly enormous sizes and I don't know why.

I get the same feeling. It's a combination of shock at the scale, the unknown, and a feeling of vertigo.

Every time I look at these things I'm amazed at the speciality of our brains. Beyond a certain scale I'm totally lost at the relative sizes. I'm left only to gasp at how relatively big and small they seem, and at the same time to know that I could never really understand how immensely big the tarantula nebula is, or how small a quark is.

Most of all, these things invariably fill me with a combination of wonder and sadness over how much there must be going on in the universe - planets of incomprehensible beauty, and countless civilizations ranging from horrible to wonderful that, sadly, wouldn't bother to contact us even if they could. Given our level of technology and our positioning even within our own galaxy, even if there was a Milky Way Intergalactic Civilization, they wouldn't even think about coming out here to say hi if they knew we were here. It would be similar to me packing the car up and heading to West Texas to overturn a rock and say hi to a beetle.

Sigh.
posted by jimmythefish at 1:10 PM on February 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


The Scale of The Universe 2 (give it a minute to load)

I'm not loading the universe on this computer, the internet alone almost crashed it.
posted by StickyCarpet at 1:44 PM on February 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


Looks like we are smack in the middle between the smallest and the largest objects dimensionwise: neutrino (10^-25m) - human being (10^0m) - universe (10^25m), give or take an order of magnitude or two.

I'm not sure what it means, but I'm sure it means ... something.
posted by sour cream at 2:31 PM on February 10, 2012


I like the inclusion of Russell's teapot. No depiction of the universe should be without it.
posted by fredludd at 3:12 PM on February 10, 2012


Well.

Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
posted by bicyclefish at 5:28 PM on February 10, 2012 [1 favorite]


fearfulsymmetry: Woah, Minecraft world is fracking huge!

It's impressive but I'm sure it's dwarfed by the Nebula of All Internet Porn.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 5:42 PM on February 10, 2012


Reminds me of this. Only time, not space.
posted by hot_monster at 6:47 PM on February 10, 2012


Ugh, this is SO COOL. Thanks for linking it!
posted by Auguris at 8:40 PM on February 10, 2012


Good for my purposes, I love it!
posted by bebrave! at 8:41 PM on February 10, 2012


Joey Michaels: "I feel anxiety when I start zooming out to the truly enormous sizes and I don't know why."

These sorts of things just make me so happy, so proud of the people who have discovered all of this, these amazing, spectacular, sometimes lucky human beings who have given us so many gifts, who have come to such a huge understanding.

I mean, it's sortof goofy that I'm proud of them, right, it's not like they're my kids or whatever, but they are on my *team* as it were, people, stomping around on a Friday night looking for the remote, and a good hummus dip, and a glass of wine.
(Okay, so I can't have the wine anymore, but I'd want them to have it, and you, if they'd want to, and you'd want to. And I'd like for it to be a wine that's so goddamn great that you'd feel almost spoiled rotten, in fact you do feel spoiled rotten, just a little, in knowing how lucky you are to have it on your tongue, plus you found the remote.)

That's what I feel when I get to looking at these things, and thinking about them.
posted by dancestoblue at 9:08 PM on February 10, 2012 [2 favorites]


It's impressive but I'm sure it's dwarfed by the Nebula of All Internet Porn.

Sadly, I've spent a few mintues googling and crunching numbers and the internet is not that big (I make it 'only' the size of a large country if you laid out all the web pages) and pr0n is only 5% of that.

Also WoW is smaller than you would think (EVE is pretty big exception)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:31 AM on February 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


Yeah, but what's outside that?
posted by blue_beetle at 6:20 AM on February 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


This is so much better than version 1 that I suspect the authors saw my complaints here or elsewhere.
As it is now I love it.
To dancestoblue: imagine how it is for us professionals to seek photons from quasars most of the way to the edge of the universe only to have it hit a cloud in the last hundred metres...
posted by edd at 3:04 PM on February 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


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