"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."<p>Wanted to be the first :-)
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.<p>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 numbers on the bottom to actually perceive the correct scale.
I feel like The Scale of the Universe did a better job at giving a sense of scale, and it goes all the way from plank length to the edge of the observable universe!<p><a href="http://htwins.net/scale2/" rel="nofollow">http://htwins.net/scale2/</a>
An alltime classic: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0</a> (Powers of Ten (1977))
Space is like that one time you're in another country and you look out over the ocean, and there's a little boat there and then you realize it's actually a very large sailboat and for a moment you're struck by vertigo, wondering who the skipper is, wondering if they are out on vacation too or if this is their <i>life</i>, out here on the open ocean, with water like blue glass, and you have to take quick breaths and stare down at the beach rocks until it's passed, because for just a moment you feel like a tiny little part of the web of people moving upon the globe, and it makes your chest seize up because you know there is more out there than you will ever be able to see or know, there is so much that you will never be able to experience and understand, a thousand million things that you just can't fit into your life before you run out of life to live —<p>— but so much bigger than that.
I prefer the interactive solar system on Josh Worth's site.<p><a href="http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html" rel="nofollow">http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.h...</a>
It's only the solar system, but it's still a long walk to Pluto: <a href="http://www.jeffreybennett.com/model-solar-systems/colorado-scale-model-solar-system/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jeffreybennett.com/model-solar-systems/colorado-s...</a><p>Models like that get across the incredible amounts of space in space.
Not sure why this goes with "Warp 1" when "Warp 1" is the speed of light, something that even a casual Trek fan may very well be unaware of, to say nothing of the general public.
I love this and show it to everyone I know. They've updated the graphics since I last saw it so I get to show everyone all over again.<p>Almost everybody is surprised when they learn how close to earth the ISS' orbit actually is. They look at me funny, well, some do, the barbarians, when I point out that it is in LOW-Earth Orbit after all and the pictures and video of Earth shot from the ISS vs. photos of Earth from the moon show that the station orbits very close to Earth indeed. Some people have no sense of awe and wonder... :/
Let us go on a journey of imagination across the vast distances of space...<p>...completely ruin it with scrolling...<p>...and stop at 20 light-minutes from Earth.
<a href="https://www.khanacademy.org/science/cosmology-and-astronomy/universe-scale-topic/scale-small-large-tutorial/v/scale-of-the-large" rel="nofollow">https://www.khanacademy.org/science/cosmology-and-astronomy/...</a> have also done a good video on the scale of small and large, and putting the size of space into perspective, its pretty good.
Was anyone else surprised to learn that the US tested a nuclear explosion (Argus III) at a distance comparable to somewhere between the International Space Station and the Hubble Telescope?
Big is an understatement. If people had any real conceptualization of the degree of mineral wealth is out there in the inner solar system alone (to say nothing of the Jovian system), space programs would see a lot more public support.<p>On a related note, I hate stumbling across sci-fi novels on Amazon that conflate solar systems with galaxies. Same mindset at work there.
They could have tossed in a few of the large moons of Jupiter & Saturn and included the Oort cloud at the very end for completeness.<p>Great visualization nevertheless...Especially loved the various markers for spacecraft. Mind boggling what we have achieved in the short space of about 60 years.
Reminds me on this on:
<a href="http://www.distancetomars.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.distancetomars.com/</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5489039" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5489039</a>
If they're going to make a full page take-over-the-scroll type of experience, why wouldn't they do this from the bottom going up? I was distracted by the "upside-downness" of it the whole time.
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 <a href="http://hansonlab.tudelft.nl/teleportation/" rel="nofollow">http://hansonlab.tudelft.nl/teleportation/</a>