Life On Life On Life

December 15, 2013 2:20 PM

Once you’ve picked your jaw from the floor, here’s what you’re looking at: the final stop of this zoom, which spans multiple orders of magnitude, is a little bacterium.
posted by monospace (20 comments total)

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
posted by Thing at 2:33 PM on December 15, 2013 [14 favorites]

Wow. That's way more effective than some koan about one hand clapping.
posted by ignignokt at 2:46 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Very cool.

Though I'm a little bummed that the article mentioned a Reddit user who came up with a vaguely amusing description for the image before the guy who actually created it.
posted by benito.strauss at 3:04 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

I would like to complain.

Things exist that have eyes like that.
posted by Drexen at 3:27 PM on December 15, 2013 [5 favorites]

That diatom looks just like a little monocle
posted by theodolite at 3:33 PM on December 15, 2013 [2 favorites]

Psh, crustacean. They probably just fished one of my used Biore strips out of the trash.
posted by Apropos of Something at 4:07 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

http://www.powersof10.com/film
posted by infinitewindow at 4:23 PM on December 15, 2013

Yo dawg I herd you like life
posted by dhens at 4:24 PM on December 15, 2013

I wanted this to start at the edge of the universe and then allow me to control the zooming. Otherwise, still cool.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:22 PM on December 15, 2013 [2 favorites]

I don't mind the biggest critters, and I don't mind the tiny critters, it's the beasties in between that are horrifying.
posted by BlueHorse at 5:43 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

There are 34 angels dancing on the head of a pin.

But how many angels are dancing on the angels?
posted by cacofonie at 5:58 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

I had been led to believe bacteria were much more numerous and more densely populated.
posted by straight at 6:04 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

That would amount to a really dense population from the point of view of a human. It only appears sparse because we're zoomed in so far.
posted by voltairemodern at 7:10 PM on December 15, 2013

Diatoms are beautiful and remove more CO2 from Earth's atmosphere than its rain forests.
posted by cenoxo at 7:52 PM on December 15, 2013 [6 favorites]

That really looks like no frog I've ever seen. Did I read that wrong?
posted by the_royal_we at 10:50 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Gorgeous!
posted by abecedarium radiolarium at 4:29 AM on December 16, 2013

That would amount to a really dense population from the point of view of a human. It only appears sparse because we're zoomed in so far.

But, like, where's the other half of it's parent? The other 3/4 ths of their grandparent? Do bacteria jump around, multiple body-lengths at a time? Where's it going to find another bacteria to swap DNA with?
posted by straight at 8:10 AM on December 16, 2013

For some crazy reason, this really reminds of of Ren and Stimpy.
posted by Static Vagabond at 10:40 AM on December 16, 2013 [2 favorites]

and now, I feel cooties everywhere.
posted by stormpooper at 11:59 AM on December 16, 2013 [1 favorite]

Did you fuckers break the universe? I clicked on the "scale of the universe" link on the ugly-critter zoom page and it's not working.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 2:59 PM on December 16, 2013