by gabaix on 2/25/14, 8:51 PM
"What is a man in the infinite? But to show him another prodigy no less astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows. Let him take a mite which in its minute body presents him with parts incomparably more minute; limbs with their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the humours, vapours in the drops; let him, again dividing these last, exhaust his power of thought; let the last point at which he arrives be that of which we speak, and he will perhaps think that here is the extremest diminutive in nature. Then I will open before him therein a new abyss. I will paint for him not only the the visible universe, but all that he can conceive of nature’s immensity in the enclosure of this diminished atom. Let him therein see an infinity of universes of which each has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as in the visible world; in each earth animals, and at the last the mites, in which he will come upon all that was in the first, and still find in these others the same without end and without cessation; let him lose himself in wonders as astonishing in their minuteness as the others in their immensity; for who will not be amazed at seeing that our body, which before was imperceptible in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, a whole, in regard to the nothingness to which we cannot attain."
-Blaise Pascal, 1669
by fideloper on 2/25/14, 5:23 PM
Trying to comprehend the scale of the universe is deeply unsettling, especially when thinking about our minute, insignificant part of it.
Anyway, I hope the startup you're killing yourself over is going well!
by giantrobothead on 2/25/14, 5:51 PM
When I was a little kid, I used to lay in my bed, in the dark, and think about the size of the room around me. Then I'd think of the size of my house, then the size of my hometown, then the size of my home state, then the size of the United States, then the size of the planet, and so on until I couldn't conceive of the scale of what I was trying to envision.
It was at once exciting and absolutely terrifying. This doesn't quite capture that feeling, but it's still pretty neat.
by danso on 2/25/14, 8:23 PM
Everytime I see one of these things, I think of "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" and the Total Perspective Vortex:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex#Total_...
> The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore... which is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as horrific as it is. When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here."
by thangalin on 2/25/14, 6:38 PM
by OhRly on 2/25/14, 7:20 PM
by treeface on 2/25/14, 6:15 PM
by fdej on 2/25/14, 7:05 PM
Very well done.
It actually always baffles me that so much of biology takes place on scales that are very close to human perception. When looking at microscope images, the sizes of things become very abstract. Atoms and cells might as well be of the same size.
But a 0.1 mm object is perceptible to the naked eye. This resolution is just an order of magnitude too crude to see individual cells (the human egg cell is just barely visible to the naked eye), and two orders of magnitude cruder than the resolution limit of optical microscopes. Imagine how differently science might have progressed if we had known about cells before inventing the microscope!
by knowaveragejoe on 2/25/14, 7:17 PM
by ForHackernews on 2/25/14, 11:02 PM
by chm on 2/25/14, 8:40 PM
I liked the first one, and I think this version is very good looking too. Good job.
I suggest you add a "play" button, where it scrolls from one end to the other at a slow pace, much like in the first iteration. It's nice to sit back and enjoy the view.
by glomph on 2/25/14, 11:07 PM
by izzydata on 2/25/14, 5:26 PM
I wish this page worked. Might just be on my end, but I really want to see this. I love the overwhelming feeling of insignificance.
by biot on 2/25/14, 6:51 PM
Is there not a virtual world which can represent a contiguous series of locations larger than that of Minecraft?
by intull on 2/26/14, 12:37 AM
by Fr0styMatt on 2/25/14, 11:20 PM
For anyone with access to an Oculus Rift, I can't recommend "Titans of Space" highly enough. It brought me to tears. The sense of scale you get is utterly amazing.
http://www.crunchywood.com/
by TheSOB888 on 2/25/14, 6:34 PM
That largest bacterium's size is incorrect. It shows a chain of them as 750um, but in reality just one can become that large. In the picture, they look as big as a human ovum at 120um, but obviously that's not accurate.
by kamaal on 2/26/14, 3:34 AM
Actually that being the case why isn't it possible that the universe itself is just a planck scale like entity inside something bigger than us?
by aswanson on 2/26/14, 12:57 AM
There was a link here awhile ago to see visualization s of known. Star systems. Anyone recall that link? Would wait love ro take another tour...
by shultays on 2/27/14, 11:27 AM
What does it mean by "lengths shorter than this are not confirmed"? We are not sure about the size of objects smaller than it?
by mikepmalai on 2/25/14, 9:09 PM
Turn off the music and scroll through playing Daft Punk's Recognizer on the Tron soundtrack.
by dlsym on 2/25/14, 10:50 PM
Frequent repost. Old. Karmadecay.
by fauria on 2/25/14, 10:12 PM
Existential Horror masterpiece.
by neduma on 2/25/14, 9:42 PM
Wow.
