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The scale of the universe, and everything

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Re: The scale of the universe, and everything

#11

Post by michaelcampbell »

prawn wrote: post #10
sho_hn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my take-away when I get to see things like this -- rather, I always find it pretty amazing that something as small as a human brain is capable of holding (rough, admittedly) working models of and reason about something as vast in scale :). It's a nice dynamic - all that scale and complexity out there, and its mirror image reflection in our tiny heads.

I agree with both of you. It's not impossible to be both in awe of our insignificance, and the capabilities of something so puny in the scheme of things.

Thank you - that's actually more or less what I mean, though I phrased it poorly. I'm not so much depressed at our insignificance as quite in awe to be able to KIND OF understand something so awesome (and so awesomely small). Or at least have a meta-understanding of parts of it. =)

Re: The scale of the universe, and everything

#12

Post by moblivu »

neuromorphic wrote: post #8

This is so beautiful, so sublime, truly one of the jewels of the Web. And yet... I wonder if anyone else had the same reaction I did, quite a few I would guess. Hmm. The thing is, it is so enchanting, produces such a sense of wonderment, lulled by the music and so on, that as I approached the end of the sliding scale, with each step the animations taking a few moments to load... I started to think: what is lying in s…

Trust me, this is pure! I was getting something in my bookmarks when I saw that link. I wanted to share this marvelous piece of animation!

Re: The scale of the universe, and everything

#16

Post by Jach »

sho_hn wrote: post #5
michaelcampbell wrote: post #4

This is one of my favorite "web things" ever. It is an awesome illustration of how fundamentally insignificant we are.

That's not my take-away when I get to see things like this -- rather, I always find it pretty amazing that something as small as a human brain is capable of holding (rough, admittedly) working models of and reason about something as vast in scale :). It's a nice dynamic - all that scale and complexity out there, and its mirror image reflection in our tiny heads.

Your post's parent and your reply seem to have come up in every single HN thread where this thing or similar have appeared.

Define your point of reference for significance. Considering we may end up producing the beings and machines that colonize much of the observable universe, I think we can be pretty significant from the view of a hypothetical space monster thousands of lightyears away.

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