If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel • Hacker News Board

Re: If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel

#181

Post by userulluipeste » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 4:41 PM UTC

Wohui wrote: post #161

mattquiros wrote: post #132

Anybody else get the feeling that we're probably stuck and will all die here on Earth? While scrolling through all that empty space, I was thinking about interstellar travel. I imagine it'll eventually be as easy and commonplace as we see in sci-fi, but I'm having a moment of doubt we'll ever get there, or if there's any point out-living the home planet.

I've always felt that way, thanks to the voyagers (37 years and the two little unmanned projectiles have managed to move 16 light hours). My dad always tried to tell me we're just waiting for the next scientific breakthrough. Either way, I think we desperately need to take care of earth; I can't think of an analogy but the earlier we move to take care of earth, the greater the extension to the time we have.

Things have evolved in the meantime and I think with current technology newer unmanned projectiles can be sent to surpass the 37-year old unmanned spacecraft, if that would be a goal. To take those "16 light hours" as a benchmark is not fair.

Re: If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel

#182

Post by nunodonato » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 4:42 PM UTC

delinka wrote: post #129

ryan wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you realize the dust is made of stars...

And stars, dust. And we are all star-stuff, each of us.

:')

Re: If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel

#183

Post by aamirabro » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 4:46 PM UTC

Log scales are for quitters, relevant xckd: http://xkcd.com/1162/

Re: If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel

#184

Post by retube » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 5:41 PM UTC

Arjuna wrote: post #81

If you scroll to the end, out beyond Pluto, it says, "Might as well stop now. We'll need to scroll through 6,771 more maps like this before we see anything else." For those curious, after scrolling 6,771 more maps, that is approximately where you would expect to find Proxima Centauri. However, there are actually some other points of interest along the way (between Pluto and Proxima Centauri), including Eris, 90377 Se…

That Map is ~1.7m pixels wide.

If we redid it with the solar system (diamater: 10bn km) as a single pixel then it would be 3,800 pixels to Proxima Centauri, 94m pixels to cross our galaxy and 2bn pixels to get to Andromeda, the nearest "major" galaxy at 2m light years away.

Re: If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel

#185

Post by romaniv » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 7:44 PM UTC

jgw wrote: post #134

romaniv wrote: post #106

Funny. It feels like an adventure game, it illustrates a point, and it's just a static page. I even checked, it works perfectly fine without JavaScript. Great example of what can be achieved with good design. I can't help to mentally contrast this with what people call "web apps" these days that use extremely complicated client-side code to communicate far less interesting things, and often do it badly anyway.

It did to me, too. It has some of the mood of my all-time favourite piece of Interactive Fiction - heck, of any fiction. Photopia ( http://adamcadre.ac/if/photopia.html ) It's my hope that one soul, somewhere, will discover this today. That would make me happy. :)

Always meant to play Photopian, but didn't get to it so far. After this reminder there is a higher probability that I will.

Re: If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel

#186

Post by 64598u3wieodsk » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 7:53 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #57

There is a 1:1 billion scale planet path along the Rhine in Bonn. It makes for a nice Sunday walk (six kilometers from the Sun to Pluto), traversing pretty much the entire city. It seems many other places in central Europe have similar scale models of the solar system, though I’m not sure how common those are in North America.

That sounds wonderful. I am living in Bonn right now, just off the river bank. Might as well use the good weather and explore the path tomorrow :)

Re: If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel

#187

Post by brc » Wed, Mar 05, 2014, 10:54 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #175

brc wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sole advantages of imperial units over metric units is that they are easier and faster to say. 50 miles is a ton less syllables than 50 'kilometers' an inch is much easier to say than '2 centimetres' What would immensely improve the metric system would be recognised, single-syllable slang words for every measurement unit. A lot of native-metric-english speakers try, they say 'mil' for millilitres, they say 'kays'…

Compare equivalent accuracy. "one hundred and eighty three centimetres" is not noticeably more complex than "five feet seven and a half inches". And you have the option of "eighteen decimeters" if that's the level of accuracy you want - try inventing an intermediate unit on the fly with imperial.

But you wouldn't go down to a half-inch, and there is a shortcut - '5 foot 7'. I'm not referring to accurate measurements, but the sort of day-to-day, rounded off measurements that pepper our daily speech.

If I said a decimeter to any of my friends, they would have no idea what I was talking about.

Re: If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel

#188

Post by nrivadeneira » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 5:21 AM UTC

oe wrote: post #152

nrivadeneira wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't turn HN into Reddit.

Please don't complain about HN turning into Reddit. It's not.

None of the ancestor comments are in the spirit of HN. They're much closer to the kind of comments found on Reddit.

See:

"The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: both civil and substantial.

The test for substance is a lot like it is for links. Does your comment teach us anything? There are two ways to do that: by pointing out some consideration that hadn't previously been mentioned, and by giving more information about the topic, perhaps from personal experience." http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Re: If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel

#189

Post by lmm » Thu, Mar 06, 2014, 3:05 PM UTC

brc wrote: post #187

lmm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare equivalent accuracy. "one hundred and eighty three centimetres" is not noticeably more complex than "five feet seven and a half inches". And you have the option of "eighteen decimeters" if that's the level of accuracy you want - try inventing an intermediate unit on the fly with imperial.

But you wouldn't go down to a half-inch, and there is a shortcut - '5 foot 7'. I'm not referring to accurate measurements, but the sort of day-to-day, rounded off measurements that pepper our daily speech. If I said a decimeter to any of my friends, they would have no idea what I was talking about.

> there is a shortcut - '5 foot 7'

You can say "1 meter 83", and people do.

> If I said a decimeter to any of my friends, they would have no idea what I was talking about.

Well, mine would - and any who didn't could easily figure it out. If you're willing to memorize all the random names the imperial units have, you can afford to remember "deci".