[edited] - It's incredible to think that it starts from DNA, is 3.5nm tall and the solid silicon fins in our phone's transistor is twice that.
Size of Life
61–70 of 286 posts
Re: Size of Life
#62The visual scale seems off, especially on the smaller end of things. Also, are Velociraptors really that small? Jurassic Park lied to me.
Spielberg took a Deinonychus and called it a Velociraptor because it sounded cooler.
Re: Size of Life
#63Very cool. I was surprised that orangutans are described as being only 2 feet 9 inches tall, I think most are a bit larger. Maybe when sitting they're under 3 feet? From wikipedia:
"females typically stand 115 cm (45 in) tall and weigh around 37 kg (82 lb), while adult males stand 137 cm (54 in) tall and weigh 75 kg (165 lb). The tallest orangutan recorded was a 180 cm (71 in)."
Re: Size of Life
#64[edited] - It's incredible to think that it starts from DNA, is 3.5nm tall and the solid silicon fins in our phone's transistor is twice that.
The chip is not smaller than 3.5nm; but a component on the chip is that small.
Re: Size of Life
#65if anyone that made this sees this, you made a typo on the Dwarf Lanternshark, its not Columbia, its ColOmbia
Re: Size of Life
#66>microns to inches
absolutely foul
Re: Size of Life
#67Reminds me of the classic "powers of 10" video: https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0. Someone ought to remake that but as a gaussian splat reconstruction, so you can freely move the camera as well as zoom.
Re: Size of Life
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I came to the comments to express surprise that amoebas were so large. It appears they vary wildly in size (as small as 2.3 micrometers... but up to 20 cm, or nearly 8 inches). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba#Size_range
It is not right to call the xenophyophore that is on the last row, and which can have a size of up to 20 cm as an "amoeba". Only the next row above it, with Pelomyxa, is indeed an amoeba and one that is very frequently encountered and which usually has sizes not much less than 1 millimeter and sometimes it can reach a size of a few mm. The true amoebas are much more closely related to humans, than to xenophyophores (…
Thank you for that info/correction!
Re: Size of Life
#69It seems to be like some of the scales slightly off? If you are looking at the ladybird (ladybug) with the amoeba to the left, the amoeba isn't an order of the magnitude smaller - it would actually be visible by the human eye (bigger than a grain of sand)? Indeed, the amoeba seems the same size as the ladybird's foot? Similarly, this makes the bumblebee appear smaller than a human finger (the in the adjacent picture)…
The tardigrade vs. ladybug gave me pause. So a tardigrade is about the side of a ladybugs eye?
Actually the tardigrade used as an example is quite big at 500 micrometers.
Most tardigrades are not much bigger than 100 micrometers.
Tardigrades, together with nematodes, rotifers, mites and a few more rarely encountered groups are among the smallest animals and they are smaller than many of the bigger among the unicellular eukaryotes. That is why they have been discovered only after the invention of the microscope.
The tardigrades have evolved towards smaller and smaller sizes very early, already during the Cambrian. It is interesting that they are segmented animals, like their relatives the arthropods and the velvet worms, but they have very few segments, because in order to achieve such a small size they have lost all intermediate segments, so the segments that now form their body were originally the segments of the head, and now they are followed immediately by the original segments of the tail, without the original body that connected the head to the tail. Thus they have been miniaturized by losing their body and becoming a walking head (the legs of the tardigrades are what in arthropods have become appendages of the mouth, e.g. mandibles and maxillae).
Re: Size of Life
#70“Compressible rodent” was not a phrase I thought I’d ever hear but I’m glad I did. Worth the price of a couple of coffees.