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If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
21–30 of 273 posts
Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
#22I've seen models like this before. We live in a universe with many, many orders of magnitude. In both directions. Living creatures to small to see, space too big to comprehend.
Mining asteroids for space resources sounds great, right up until you consider the distances involved. Living on Mars - yes, we really should - but you sure aren't going to support a colony long-term from anywhere but local resources.
Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
#23Make sure you press the "c" button in the bottom right. Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. I think we'll have a holodeck before we reach another star. And maybe that'll be enough.
If you travel at relativistic speeds, your trip will appear far shorter to you than to those that stayed on Earth.
With a ship able to accelerate at 1G continuously, you can be at the edge of the observable universe in [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/s4tbry/oc_...
Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
#24I just love that this is still online after all these years.
Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
#25When I was dabbling with POV-Ray many moons ago, I drew the planets of our solar system to scale with it. You can see it here: https://github.com/susam/pov25#planets
A friend once asked if I couldn't show the planets in orbit rather than lying flat on a plane. I could, of course, but this is ray tracing. What do planets actually look like to human eyes from Earth? Just tiny dots.
If I were to show them in their proper orbits at scale using perspective projection, I'd only be able to render one planet large enough to be visually interesting. The rest would appear as small dots. I didn't want to use an orthographic projection, as it wouldn't reflect how we actually see the universe.
Those were, of course, limitations of a still image. An interactive page like the one in the original post does a fantastic job of conveying the vast scale of our solar system, both in terms of the sizes of the planets and the immense distances between them.
Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
#26Scrolling with mouse scroll wheel a few hundred thousand kilometers at a time is so much work that I gave up :-(
Click on the planet symbols at the top to fast track.
Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
#27The way I often visualize the solar system is:
If the sun would be the size of a coin, then earth would be around 2m away from it and so small you could barely see it.
Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
#28Make sure you press the "c" button in the bottom right. Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. I think we'll have a holodeck before we reach another star. And maybe that'll be enough.
Maybe light’s insanely fast and space is just huge. It’s all relative ;)
I would say they're two sides of the same coin. The time it takes for light to travel the universe (which makes communication even with nearby stars essentially impossible) is what makes the universe huge.
Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
#29[deleted]
Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)
#30The light speed toggle really hammers home the emptiness. Like, I know that the Earth is ~8 light minutes out, but sitting and waiting 8 minutes for a few pixels to appear when scrolling away from the sun…
and even this is not making it super tangible, because the speed of light to monkey brains is basically infinite.