science

September 20, 2004 11:56 AM

View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.
posted by semmi (18 comments total)

Cool. Thanks, semmi.
posted by soyjoy at 12:02 PM on September 20, 2004

"I can see my house!"
posted by chrid at 12:06 PM on September 20, 2004

Interesting that we still know much more about the macrocosm than the microcosm. Thanks for the link, semmi!
posted by rhapsodie at 12:06 PM on September 20, 2004

Wow...trippy. ::inhales, looks for Cheetos::
posted by ChrisTN at 12:11 PM on September 20, 2004

Almost verbatim...
posted by rmannion at 12:19 PM on September 20, 2004

Nice. Requires java though. It's another vision of the classic 1977 instructional video Powers of Ten.

On preview, damn, forgot this was a dup.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:26 PM on September 20, 2004

At least the verbiage was taken from the site itself, rather than the duplicated post.
posted by rhapsodie at 12:26 PM on September 20, 2004

i knew i'd seen this durn thing before...
posted by glenwood at 12:27 PM on September 20, 2004

I don't care if it is a dup, it's neat. Thanks semmi.
posted by kamylyon at 12:52 PM on September 20, 2004

Sheesh. They stop when they get to quarks. Pussies.
posted by gazingus at 12:55 PM on September 20, 2004

First I felt all small and insignificant, and then at the end, huge and godlike. Fear me, o puny quarks!
posted by picea at 1:20 PM on September 20, 2004

dhartung mentioned it was linked in a comment when Tarrama first posted this and she apologized, modestly and sincerely. For re-posting a link from a comment! All the same, it was a first post. So, props to rmannion for the polite doublepost call here. I was ready to hop in, myself. I remembered Tarrama's link, too, and I suspect I can find it here via MeFi Googling *pause* and the answer is Yes!

Ahem. Running text or titles of articles or institutions through MeFi Google, the lower box on the Search page, can quite easily catch a previous post even if the link itself no longer registers one. Make a note of it.

It still is pretty darn cool.
posted by y2karl at 9:42 PM on September 20, 2004

Hey there's Venus.
Oh look, the Moon.
Ah, the blue globe we call home.
WHOA!!! FLORIDA!
*[thh-TANG!-ng-ng-ng*

That one zoom is like getting dick-whipped with America's Wang.

Nice link, you sweat from a babboon's balls!
posted by scarabic at 10:53 PM on September 20, 2004

"I can see my house!"

And right near by is your polling place. Look! No black people!

Great piece of zoominess, repeat or not. Thanks!
posted by squirrel at 3:47 AM on September 21, 2004

Sometimes you just can't beat the old scalewise analogy comparison. One I like to use for atoms is (hoping I have the scales correct, I may be 10-100 off someplace):

You know how small a millimetre is? Now imagine a tenth of that. It's like a tiny grain of sand. Imagine that is the nucleus of the atom. Then the nearest electron orbital begins pretty much around a million kilometres outwards from the nucleus. The electrons are tiny, infinitesimal pointlike particles with only 1/2000th of the mass of the smallest nucleus (a proton). And their paths are smeared out across across 20 million kilometres of space. And it's the repulsion between those very diffuse electron clouds that gives matter its volume and shape.
posted by meehawl at 4:20 AM on September 21, 2004

MetaFilter: like getting dick-whipped with America's Wang.
posted by ChrisTN at 7:29 AM on September 21, 2004

very cool, even if it is a dp. thanks!
posted by lazaruslong at 9:49 AM on September 21, 2004

phhhtt.
That tree isn't even there anymore. Ivan got it.
posted by y0mbo at 8:49 PM on September 21, 2004