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"Each about one micron—a thousandth of a millimeter—in length, the newfound genus Pandoravirus dwarfs other viruses, which range in size from about 50 nanometer
by AaronLasseigne 13y ago
"Each about one micron—a thousandth of a millimeter—in length, the newfound genus Pandoravirus dwarfs other viruses, which range in size from about 50 nanometers up to 100 nanometers."
That is a horrible use of units.
- karpathy 13y agoI thought the same thing exactly. I usually convert everything on molecular scales in terms of proportions to the nearest tangible entity. (I find nm too abstract and harder to remember) A single hydrogen atom has diameter of about 10e-10 meters. A single nanometer is 10e-9 (i.e. about 10 hydrogens stacked) Viruses are on order of 50-100 nanometers => ~500-1000 hydrogens across. These viruses are 10e-6 meters, or 10,000 hydrogens across. That's too many to imagine and hard to remember, so other useful dimensions I sometimes use are diameter of DNA helix is about 2nm (20 hydrogens across) the size of X chromosome, which is roughly 7um. the size of a cells in our bodies vary around 10-100um. so, the best way to get a sense of scale for this particular virus (imo) is to imagine it as 1/7th of size of an X chromosome. Or as 10x bigger than an average virus.