The scale of the universe

capt_slog

I picked this up on another forum, and thought, "Those clever bods that frequent the Cake Stop will like this too", so here it is.

http://htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf?bordercolor=white

Cleat Eastwood

wow that is brilliant so i now know my tog is 10 yoctometers long - ha take that claire balding

its more mindblowing zooming in than zooming out i thought

capt_slog

The things that struck me:-

on the zoom-out, was how piddlingly small our sun is compared to a lot of other stars.

on the zoom-in, how small our limit is with an electron microscope.

thecrofter

Bloody hell, that's cool

y33stu

Awesome. Although I'm nowhere near intelligent enough to comprehend the scale of all that.

bianchimoon

brilliant find Capt Slog could spend hours looking at that

oldhairylegs

Just brilliant that is.

Thanks Capt Slog!

shockedsoshocked

If upsets to think I was born a time where I wasn't able to see these places up close. And by that I mean not be a successful starfighter pilot.

Ben6899

Awesome. Absolutely awesome. But no mention of the Monolith?

finchy

The sheer size of the universe always blows my mind, but equally impressive is the tiny end of the scale. It's amazing that the human mind can even contemplate such dimensions.

ddraver

Very Good - Stolen and claimed as mine!

byke68

Like it.
Try this - Drag the bar all the way to the right then drag it back across as fast as you can - even better with some booze down ya neck!

Technik

Amazing! Do you guys still believe that we are on our own in the universe after looking on that? That universe thing is just sooo huge.... :shock:

kentphil

Really good link! I love this sort of thing.

NickintheLakes

Technik wrote:

Amazing! Do you guys still believe that we are on our own in the universe after looking on that? That universe thing is just sooo huge.... :shock:

Nope - we are probably not alone.

mattwood

NickintheLakes wrote:

Technik wrote:

Amazing! Do you guys still believe that we are on our own in the universe after looking on that? That universe thing is just sooo huge.... :shock:

Nope - we are probably not alone.

I am willing to go the other way and suggest that we are, but that we probably have not been the sole inhabitants of the universe.

The reason for this is even to think that life may exist in a relatively close galaxy, any civilisation could either be long extinct by the time we know about it, or we could well be extinct by the time they are able to detect our existence, due mainly to the fact we still rely on electromagnetic waves to contact any potential life forms, and due to the distance to the nearest galaxy, this could still take millions/billions of years to transmit/receive.

For example, Andromeda is 2.5 million lightyears away - so that would be a theoretical 5 million years to send and receive a signal - bloody long time.

Another one to look at is the 'Pale Blue Dot' photograph, and what Carl Sagan has to say about it:

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

bianchimoon

Another one to look at is the 'Pale Blue Dot' photograph, and what Carl Sagan has to say about it:

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

[/quote]
All politicians should have that to recite that quote, not some ridiculous swearing of allegiance to an archaeic figurehead

kentphil

Humans have only existed for about 50,000 years (longer if you include very early man) which is no time at all in the scale of the universe. An even shorter time if you allow for advancements such as the use of electricity etc. So as previously said other life forms may have come and gone, and others may develop in the future and we wouldn't know anything about them.

thecrofter

I remember a demonstration at school (a long time ago) where our teacher compared a twelve inch ruler to the timescale over which the planet earth has existed. The presence of man was represented by 1/32nd of an inch (less them 1mm for you youngsters)

DavMartinR

This is great. Reminds me of a film I saw as a kid. It started with the blood cells through a mosquito feeding on a boys arm while sitting in a boat on a lake and then went out to outer space, but not as in depth as this.

Stevo_666

Great stuff, pity the Crudcatcher beat you to it last year

capt_slog

DavMartinR wrote:

This is great. Reminds me of a film I saw as a kid. It started with the blood cells through a mosquito feeding on a boys arm while sitting in a boat on a lake and then went out to outer space, but not as in depth as this.

ah yes, I remember that one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgfwCrKe_Fk

capt_slog

Stevo 666 wrote:

Great stuff, pity the Crudcatcher beat you to it last year

I did a search for it, but only on this forum. ah well.

Aggieboy

Stevo 666 wrote:

Great stuff, pity the Crudcatcher beat you to it last year

That's the old version, smartarse. Us Roadies have the all singing, all dancing, new Mk2 version.

morstar

It does answer the question...

How long is a piece of string?

Fantastic stuff though, very impressed.

RonB

Kinda like the "Total Perspective Vortex" from h2g2.

DavMartinR

Capt Slog wrote:

DavMartinR wrote:

This is great. Reminds me of a film I saw as a kid. It started with the blood cells through a mosquito feeding on a boys arm while sitting in a boat on a lake and then went out to outer space, but not as in depth as this.

ah yes, I remember that one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgfwCrKe_Fk

Yea, that's it. Looks a little dated now but still good. Wonder if anybody would do an new version with all the computer power and graphics we have today?

capt_slog

RonB wrote:

Kinda like the "Total Perspective Vortex" from h2g2.

I remembered that too, about the time I was thinking that the page would appeal to CAKEstop readers

Mad_Malx

Stevo 666 wrote:

Great stuff, pity the Crudcatcher beat you to it last year

I think Stevo is telling us he swings both ways.

Cleat Eastwood

me dad used to tell us that the smallest thing in the universe was 'a wrinkle on the pimple of a gnats dick' -

Mad_Malx

thecrofter wrote:

I remember a demonstration at school (a long time ago) where our teacher compared a twelve inch ruler to the timescale over which the planet earth has existed. The presence of man was represented by 1/32nd of an inch (less them 1mm for you youngsters)

It's much less than that. Numbers rounded for easy sums:
Earth - about 5 billion years old - 1 foot (about 300mm)
Humanoids - less than 5 million - 0.3mm
HomoSapiens less than 0.5 million years 0.03mm
There lots of debate about when Homo species became something you would recognise, although there are parts of UK that maybe haven't got there yet.

There is another nice analogy, if all time is represented by John of Groats to Land's End (1300km), then earth is formed around Birmingham (450km), humanoids appear just 500m from Land's End, and humans somewhere around the Land's End car park. The lives of most forum readers is just 2-5cm from the cliff edge.

Edit: 10 fold error in that last line - should read 2-5 mm from the cliff edge!