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How Big is Space?

bbc.com

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Re: How Big is Space?

#21

Post by acqq »

Cookingboy wrote: post #7

One 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…

Yes the "Powers of Ten" and Josh Worth's site, both mentioned here in the comments, are both much much better than this.

Re: How Big is Space?

#22

Post by mokus »

zatkin wrote: post #20
imaginenore wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On 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.

What about the difference between having one IPv6 address and having all IPv6 addresses?

Depends 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.

Re: How Big is Space?

#23

Post by Roboprog »

tectec wrote: post #12
Cookingboy wrote: post #7

One 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…

The 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.h...

You killed it! :-)

Re: How Big is Space?

#24

Post by Roboprog »

zem wrote: post #13
neilellis wrote: post #2

"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 :-)

yeah, the title was practically a setup for that :)

I mean, it's BBC, for cryin' out loud.

Re: How Big is Space?

#25

Post by jordanlev »

logfromblammo wrote: post #5

Let 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.

I liked the scrolling... it feels like they didn't scrolljack the browser either, it's very smooth.

Re: How Big is Space?

#26

Post by [deleted] »

imaginenore wrote: post #16
amelius wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What 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...

On 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.

[deleted]

Re: How Big is Space?

#27

Post by curiousjorge »

Kinda 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/

Re: How Big is Space?

#28

Post by thaumasiotes »

curiousjorge wrote: post #27

Kinda 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 (mo…

> after you are finished copying the atom data, the old copy must be deleted to prevent endless dopp[el]gangers appearing

Why would we need to prevent this?

Re: How Big is Space?

#29

Post by keedot »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #28
curiousjorge wrote: post #27

Kinda 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 (mo…

> after you are finished copying the atom data, the old copy must be deleted to prevent endless dopp[el]gangers appearing Why would we need to prevent this?

Play Sims 4 with the "Get to work" expansion. Having 8 me's in a house is a real problem.
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