Monday, November 26, 2012

Robert: The Scale of the Known Universe

Tranquility Break:

Oooohh this is cool. The conventional wisdom is that size doesn't matter, blah blah blah, but, ya gotta see this.

It starts with the tiniest of all known objects (or technically, concepts, i.e a fundamental segment as postulated by String Theory, an irreducible grid of quantum foam as conceived by Quantum Mechanics,  and the supposed Planck Length (the theoretically shortest possible length).
 
These are not particles, they are not "matter," they are elemental concepts postulated to explain the behavior of larger particles and/or waves, such as neutrinos and quarks (the next steps up in the size scale).

These tiniest "precursors" of matter are 10 to -35th power meters. That's like, really small, dude.

Next, and much, much larger (relatively) are neutrinos, at 10 to the -24th power meters. Or, 0.000000000000000000000001 meters. Mas o menos. :)

From there you scroll up through quarks, electrons, molecules, viruses, and on and on until ultimately you are scrolling/rising through a receding field of planets, suns, nebulae, and galaxies.

This puts everything in an almost (but certainly not entirely, not for us lowly humanoids) comprehensible scale of relative sizes.

It's fun, I promise. Try it, click the orange link, then scroll on the bar below the graphics. Be sure to start with the scroll button all the way to the left.

Scale of the Known Universe







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