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How Big is Space?
- neilellis 11y ago"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." Wanted to be the first :-)
- amelius 11y agoWhat do you mean? Clearly our own personal reality is happening within 1 scrollbar-handle-height, and the whole of space is about 20 scrollbar-handle-heights, so space can't be that big...
- scrumper 11y agoIt's Douglas Adams, from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I hope you haven't read it because it's a treat.
- imaginenore 11y agoOn a log scale. 20 orders of magnitude is f*ing huge. It's way bigger than the difference between having one penny in you account and having all the money in the world.
- zatkin 11y agoWhat about the difference between having one IPv6 address and having all IPv6 addresses?
- mokus 11y agoDepends on definitions, but if you go with 10 as your base for "orders of magnitude" and 64-bit prefixes as "one IPv6 address" (which is the intended amount of address space for a single host), it's pretty close to precisely the same difference of scale. If you mean every possible 128-bit address of IPv6, then IPv6 wins by another 20 orders of magnitude. EDIT: of course, space wins either way if you count volume rather than distance - the "orders of magnitude" compound additively. and I also doubt that "one scrollbar unit" corresponds exactly to a power of 10, so it's still a weird comparison.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zem 11y agoyeah, the title was practically a setup for that :)
- Roboprog 11y agoI mean, it's BBC, for cryin' out loud.
- mattkevan 11y agoI'm worried that as these 'space is really big' sites get better, someone will inadvertantly create a browser-based total perspective vortex and instantly annihilate the brain of anyone who visits.
- stcredzero 11y agoThe median Silicon Valley techie ego surpassed 1000 millizaphods several years ago. Many of the Bay Area locals are already immune.
- antimagic 11y agoI thought the reason he survived wasn't that he just had a huge ego, but because that universe really was just created for him. Or maybe I'm misremembering that part?
- mattkevan 11y agoYou're right - by crawling out of the wrecked building through the window he entered a pocket reality designed to help him discover the true ruler of the universe. Or something. I can't remember whether it happened that way in the radio series or the books as they're quite different (let's pretend the film never happened).
- gph 11y agoIt was in the books because that's how I remember it and I never listened to the radio series (I also try to forget the film exists).
- stcredzero 11y agoI thought the reason he survived wasn't that he just had a huge ego, but because that universe really was just created for him. Apparently, it's just as good to think the universe is created just for you.
- 11y ago
- dghf 11y agoNo Oort cloud? :(
- eCa 11y agoNo, not even the scattered disc got in. On the other hand - since the Oort cloud is up to 100,000 AUs[1] away from the sun - it would have added a bit of scrolling at the end of the page. [1] 100,000 AUs: ~150,000,000,000,000 kilometres (big space is big)
- logfromblammo 11y agoLet us go on a journey of imagination across the vast distances of space... ...completely ruin it with scrolling... ...and stop at 20 light-minutes from Earth.
- jordanlev 11y agoI liked the scrolling... it feels like they didn't scrolljack the browser either, it's very smooth.
- lgas 11y agoIf they're going to make a full page take-over-the-scroll type of experience, why wouldn't they do this from the bottom going up? I was distracted by the "upside-downness" of it the whole time.
- Cookingboy 11y agoOne thing that bothers me is that charts/apps like this have to use logarithmic scale due to obvious reasons, but log scale is just not very effective for most people to comprehend on an intuitive level. In the last section each pixel is 1,000,000km, and the first section each pixel represents 1 meter, but experience wise it doesn't make the last section feel that much bigger, and I still have to keep looking at the numbers on the bottom to actually perceive the correct scale.
- scrumper 11y agoI can envision a kind of zooming out effect when you cross a scale boundary, which might have made this clearer and more intuitive.
- tectec 11y agoThe sine wave down the middle of the page helps with visualizing the changing scale. If you want a linear scale, maybe you will appreciate this page: http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.h...
- Roboprog 11y agoYou killed it! :-)
- carrotleads 11y agoI was looking for this exact link and Josh's site seems down(HN effect :)).. that page lets you appreciate the vast emptiness within which we live.. this link gives some extra details until the page is up http://gizmodo.com/this-scale-model-of-the-solar-system-will-make-you-feel-1717465934 http://gizmodo.com/this-scale-model-of-the-solar-system-will... plus some great links in the comments.
- marcosdumay 11y agoIt's worth to do a linear scale miniature of the solar system. At the 1:10^9 scale, it fits well within a farm or a big park, all the planets are at a viable size, and the Sun is not too big.
- Splendor 11y agoI prefer the interactive solar system on Josh Worth's site. http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.h...
- slowmovintarget 11y agoSeconded, but it appears to be down now. The great thing about that one is it treats the Moon as one pixel and doesn't change scale.
- Splendor 11y agoAnd it has a cool light speed mode in the bottom right which really drives home the fact that even traveling at light speed isn't enough to get humans very far.
- tobias2014 11y agoAn alltime classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 (Powers of Ten (1977))
- jerf 11y agoNot sure why this goes with "Warp 1" when "Warp 1" is the speed of light, something that even a casual Trek fan may very well be unaware of, to say nothing of the general public.
- curiousjorge 11y agoKinda depressing just how small we are and that we can't get around places to explore space without some groundbreaking invention that will transfer information from the atoms to another location instantly (something like spooky action except that after you are finished copying the atom data, the old copy must be deleted to prevent endless dopplegangers appearing) by appending some complex 3d position information (move all of my atom by appending some coordinates that could never be reached with even light travel). Something like http://hansonlab.tudelft.nl/teleportation/ http://hansonlab.tudelft.nl/teleportation/
- sktrdie 11y agoI just can't help but think that we'll reach a wall when it comes to exploring the real world. Even if we get to travel at the speed of light, we're still limited by it. In 20 years of light travel we'd only visit relatively close clusters. All the other stuff is thousands of light years away. Not to mention exploring other galaxies which are millions of light years away. Quality of life in the virtual world will perhaps be better than that of the real world. In fact, this is my explanation for the fermi paradox. Most aliens out there have essentially "given up" the idea of exploring because everything is just too far away and they simply can't bend the rules of physics. So they're all living in the matrix.
- marcosscriven 11y agoWith time-dilation, from the point of view of those on board, it's actually possible to travel as far as Andromeda with constant 1g acceleration (decelerating at 1g half way), within a few decades. Of course, time back on earth would have gone by a few million years...
- sktrdie 11y agoHuh, but if light takes 2.5 million years to get to Andromeda, how does it take us a few decades? You're saying that from the point of view of the photon, it takes much less time?
- coffeebro 11y agoI'm surprised we didn't see any ads floating through space as we aimlessly scrolled down.
- guelo 11y agoI feel like The Scale of the Universe did a better job at giving a sense of scale, and it goes all the way from plank length to the edge of the observable universe! http://htwins.net/scale2/ http://htwins.net/scale2/
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- knowaveragejoe 11y agoI see this get posted a lot, and feel the need to share a similar thing Nikon did as well since the htwins one feels so woefully inadequate. Somewhat clunky interface, but far better for grasping the scale of things in relation to each other: http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/universcale/ http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/universcale/
- neilellis 11y agoIt was in Flash and I was too scared to click :-)
- sgt 11y agoI agree, I find the BBC one pretty to look at but it's not a great illustration of how "big" space is.
- Zigurd 11y agoIt's only the solar system, but it's still a long walk to Pluto: http://www.jeffreybennett.com/model-solar-systems/colorado-scale-model-solar-system/ http://www.jeffreybennett.com/model-solar-systems/colorado-s... Models like that get across the incredible amounts of space in space.
- eCa 11y agoCool. The largest solar system model is in Sweden[1], with Pluto being 300 km away from the Sun[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson_Globe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson_Globe
- po 11y agoDefinitely. There's one in Ithaca NY as well. They are pretty simple to do, I wish there were one in every town. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_Planet_Walk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_Planet_Walk
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- suprgeek 11y agoThey could have tossed in a few of the large moons of Jupiter & Saturn and included the Oort cloud at the very end for completeness. Great visualization nevertheless...Especially loved the various markers for spacecraft. Mind boggling what we have achieved in the short space of about 60 years.
- Bluestrike2 11y agoBig is an understatement. If people had any real conceptualization of the degree of mineral wealth is out there in the inner solar system alone (to say nothing of the Jovian system), space programs would see a lot more public support. On a related note, I hate stumbling across sci-fi novels on Amazon that conflate solar systems with galaxies. Same mindset at work there.
- billpg 11y agoThe Doctor Who writers would often use "constellation" when they probably meant "galaxy". Annoys me more than it really should.
- redcalx 11y ago"If there's one thing I like more than space... it's more space" - Frank Sidebottom
- BillinSDCA 11y agoThis was pretty cool! My kudos to those who put this together. BM for sharing.
- BillinSDCA 11y agoThis was pretty cool! My kudos to those who put this together. BM for sharing.
- Sideloader 11y agoI love this and show it to everyone I know. They've updated the graphics since I last saw it so I get to show everyone all over again. Almost everybody is surprised when they learn how close to earth the ISS' orbit actually is. They look at me funny, well, some do, the barbarians, when I point out that it is in LOW-Earth Orbit after all and the pictures and video of Earth shot from the ISS vs. photos of Earth from the moon show that the station orbits very close to Earth indeed. Some people have no sense of awe and wonder... :/
- rashkov 11y agoWas anyone else surprised to learn that the US tested a nuclear explosion (Argus III) at a distance comparable to somewhere between the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope?
- em3rgent0rdr 11y agoI was! Seems a bit irresponsible.
- coldpie 11y agoSon, lemme tell you about what we did in the 40s and 50s. You are in for some wild surprises. We took two halves of a supercritical core and held them separate with a screwdriver while wearing bluejeans and cowboy hats. Why? Because we could, dammit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
- vollmond 11y agoI had no idea there had been any nuclear explosions above the 100km line, let alone above ISS's orbit. How did I not know that?
- zyxley 11y agoSpace is like that one time you're in another country and you look out over the ocean, and there's a little boat there and then you realize it's actually a very large sailboat and for a moment you're struck by vertigo, wondering who the skipper is, wondering if they are out on vacation too or if this is their life, out here on the open ocean, with water like blue glass, and you have to take quick breaths and stare down at the beach rocks until it's passed, because for just a moment you feel like a tiny little part of the web of people moving upon the globe, and it makes your chest seize up because you know there is more out there than you will ever be able to see or know, there is so much that you will never be able to experience and understand, a thousand million things that you just can't fit into your life before you run out of life to live — — but so much bigger than that.
- jayflux 11y agohttps://www.khanacademy.org/science/cosmology-and-astronomy/universe-scale-topic/scale-small-large-tutorial/v/scale-of-the-large https://www.khanacademy.org/science/cosmology-and-astronomy/... have also done a good video on the scale of small and large, and putting the size of space into perspective, its pretty good.
- em3rgent0rdr 11y agoIt would be nice if the values for the voyager and Pluto probes counted in realtime their distance instead of displaying a static number.
- telegato 11y agoReminds me on this on: http://www.distancetomars.com/ http://www.distancetomars.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5489039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5489039