Neal delivers. I recently learned that viruses are not considered living being, but I'm nevertheless happy they're included here because they're both relevant and interesting in this context.
Size of Life
31–40 of 286 posts
Re: Size of Life
#32Great use of sound!
Re: Size of Life
#33Pretty glad the 9 foot long Arthopleura centipede went extinct 300 million years ago. No one wants to deal with that thing.
We've still got this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_aphroditois
Thankfully they don't live on land.
Re: Size of Life
#34Reminds me of the classic Scale of the Universe flash toy by Cary Huang (now available in HTML 5!):
Re: Size of Life
#35If you’re interested to read something on that topic I highly recommend the essay "That's About the Size of It" by Isaac Asimov (in his book "View from a Height").
He argues that human perception of animal size is skewed because humans use themselves as a benchmark.
He takes a logarithmic approach to illustrate where humans actually fit within the overall scale of the animal kingdom. We are way larger than we think we are!
Re: Size of Life
#36Reminds me of https://scaleofuniverse.com . I think confining it to just living things removes the perspective of "Wow, we're really small compared to the rest of the universe".
Re: Size of Life
#37Neal delivers. I recently learned that viruses are not considered living being, but I'm nevertheless happy they're included here because they're both relevant and interesting in this context.
Viruses are to life as LLMs are to reasoning: they often behave like their category expects but not for the same reasons as the genuine article.
Re: Size of Life
#38Just delightful, thank you Neal.
Re: Size of Life
#39Re: Size of Life
#40Pretty glad the 9 foot long Arthopleura centipede went extinct 300 million years ago. No one wants to deal with that thing.
It was a millipede, not a centipede, which probably ate fungi or decaying plants.
So it was not a dangerous predator, though it could have been poisonous, like many modern millipedes.