Universe Size Comparison

September 13, 2018 6:00 PM

Basically a comparison of the entire Universe. (slyt)
posted by curious nu (30 comments total)

This was helpful and lovely. Thank you - I had never before heard of the Bootes Void.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 6:17 PM on September 13, 2018 [5 favorites]

Venus rotates the other direction.
posted by peeedro at 6:34 PM on September 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

This is a beautiful video - thanks for sharing!
Here are two scale things that I enjoy playing with:
One from Nikon
One that often lies to me about what flash version I have installed with another link that works more often but is not hosted on the original site.
posted by Acari at 6:53 PM on September 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

That was quite cool. And, thanks to the inclusion of the Bootes Void, has thrown me down a deep Wikipedia rabbithole of large cosmic structures. Fascinating stuff. Thank you!
posted by Thorzdad at 7:00 PM on September 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

Why does Kepler 22b with a diameter of 30000km (a bit more than 2x the diameter of the earth) and presumably (by appearances, even more so than earth) having an atmosphere appear to be pretty much destroyed with craters? I know we don't have a very good idea about what it's like, but if we posit an atmosphere for it then should we not also posit an absence of complete craterization?

That being said, I love this type of video.
posted by smcameron at 7:06 PM on September 13, 2018

I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
posted by hippybear at 7:08 PM on September 13, 2018 [9 favorites]

So strange that most of these are basically the same size when viewed with the naked eye.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 7:21 PM on September 13, 2018

I did not know that the universe was only 1,000,000 times as big as the Milky Way. I would have guessed much more.
posted by M-x shell at 7:30 PM on September 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

Seems like there are several voids. And we're in one. Although not quite grasping how it can be a void if we're there, unless... no don't go there...
posted by sammyo at 7:30 PM on September 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

and thus did sammyo gaze into the total perspective vortex.
posted by hippybear at 7:33 PM on September 13, 2018 [5 favorites]

“It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.”
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 7:34 PM on September 13, 2018 [8 favorites]

We gotta get down on some of these suckers to scan stuff and get some [UNITS. RECEIVED.] to help the economy.
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:06 PM on September 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've always suspected that humanity was best a voided.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:09 PM on September 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

It's so roomy! ...But do you think we can afford it?
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:12 PM on September 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

Mind. Blown.

again. Even something as simplistic as this video just blows my mind. How can cosmologists, astrophysicists, mathematicians, and other folks who work with this stuff every day manage to get out of bed each morning?
posted by BlueHorse at 9:01 PM on September 13, 2018

Why does Kepler 22b with a diameter of 30000km (a bit more than 2x the diameter of the earth) and presumably (by appearances, even more so than earth) having an atmosphere appear to be pretty much destroyed with craters?

Not all of the stuff in the video is accurate--Earth is shown without a cloud cover, for example. There's really not enough known about Kepler 22b to know what it looks like, or even if it has an atmosphere; all "pictures" of it are speculative. It is in the habitable zone of its star, for what that's worth.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:28 PM on September 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I also was annoyed by cloudless Earth.
posted by hippybear at 9:32 PM on September 13, 2018

*slaps roof of universe*

this baby here can fit so many voids
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:56 PM on September 13, 2018 [4 favorites]

I did not know that the universe was only 1,000,000 times as big as the Milky Way. I would have guessed much more.

Your intuition is correct. First, that's not the Universe, that's just the observable universe, which we can strongly infer is much smaller, perhaps even infinitesimally smaller, than the actual universe. The true universe is as far as we can tell, infinite, although we have no way of verifying that. Second, x times as wide translates to x-cubed times as big when it comes to volumetric space. In other words, unless I fucked up the math (entirely possible), the observable universe is about 3 exagalaxies in size, that is around 3 quintillion Milky Ways in volume. Of course most of that is intergalactic void, so there are "only" about 100-200 billion actual galaxies in the observable universe. Still way more than a million.
posted by xigxag at 10:00 PM on September 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: Of course most of that is intergalactic void
posted by hippybear at 10:11 PM on September 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I spent the whole thing going "No way!!"
posted by greermahoney at 10:20 PM on September 13, 2018

Oh for one of these conversations that (a) at least namechecks the mama and papa of all such scaling comparisons and (b) omits the dreadful and seemingly obligatory Douglas Adams haw-haw.
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:57 AM on September 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Nicely done video!
Apparently done with Blender 3D, which I deduce by the presence of Suzanne the Blender Monkey head next to the planet Jupiter
posted by Nyrath at 7:18 AM on September 14, 2018

The universe appears to be composed mostly of round things.
posted by sfenders at 8:05 AM on September 14, 2018

Metafilter: (You are Here)
posted by hanov3r at 8:27 AM on September 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

We gotta get down on some of these suckers to scan stuff and get some [UNITS. RECEIVED.] to help the economy.
posted by turbid dahlia

First I was, "Haha! Yeah, favorite."

Then I was, "Oh heck. My frigates should be back. BRB."
posted by Splunge at 8:42 AM on September 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

This morning I woke up oblivious to the existence of the Bootes Void and now it's all I can think about.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:19 AM on September 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:38 AM on September 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

this baby here can fit so many voids

My boy Luke can eat 50 voids.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:44 AM on September 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

The universe appears to be composed mostly of round things.

Non-round things can only exist at the scale where things are small enough that gravity doesn't smash them into spheres but big enough that the strong force doesn't bind them into spheres.
posted by straight at 4:47 PM on September 14, 2018 [2 favorites]