The Scale of the Universe by Fotoshop

[wautd]

I really liked this animation so I'll share it here instead of in testing.

[mr friendly guy]

That is fucking awesome. Just helps put things in perspective. Thanks a lot.

[adam_grif]

I was expecting this old thing until I clicked the link:

[Oskuro]

Very nice but.... what's with the 7m-long giant earthworm?

[The Spartan]

They're probably referring to the Giant South African Earthworm, which can reach lengths of over 20 ft.

[Oskuro]

Why aren't we harvesting those for meat?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Why aren't we harvesting those for meat?

If they're anything like the giant earthworms in Australia, they're only a couple cm in diameter, take almost a decade to reach maturity, and are endangered. Even if they were plentiful it would be like hunting burrowing snakes for food. Is there really much point?

[AniThyng]

Why aren't we harvesting those for meat?

I don't think I can rationally explain it, but somehow I don't think many people would actually eat a roasted 7m giant earthworm if it were served up to them on a plate.

[Oskuro]

Aw, c'mon, put some sauce on them and they'll be like a protein-rich pasta dish! And if still alive, it will even move! How awesome is that?


(Yeah, I know they are endangered and all, just kidding)

[Surlethe]

Enough spam - back on topic.

[wautd]

You know, atoms are (relatively) pretty damn huge if you consider the first half of the scale is everything smaller than atoms.

[The Spartan]

I know. I mean think about the difference, order of magnitude-wise, of the scale. 65 orders of magnitude. I'm not sure I can even comprehend a yattometer.

That said, the animation says that the observable universe is 14 billion lightyears across but that the estimated diameter of the universe is 94 billion lightyears. Does anyone know how they reached that number?

My understanding, which admittedly is not terribly high and possibly outdated, was that the universe, being 14 billion years old, couldn't be more than about that in radius. So, assuming the accuracy of the animation, where am I getting it wrong?

[Guardsman Bass]

If I remember right, it has something to do with the universe expanding at a speed faster than that of light, so while light has only had about 14 billion years to get to Earth, the actual universe is far vaster.

That animation is awesome. I had no idea that Canis Majoris was that fucking huge - it makes Betelgeuse look tiny, and the sun is nothing more than a speck next to it.

[Oskuro]

As a sidenote, I wanted to link that old video where the point of view zooms out from quantum scales to the whole universe (the one with concentric squares representing each order of magnitude), but can't find it. Anyone knows where it is?

I found a similar video depicting the voyage at light speed from Earth to the limits of the visible universe, but was kind of turned off when the last thing the narrator says is "...it is a spectacular tapestry, so vast and diverse in its design, that the power of its creator must truly surpass all human understanding." (here)
At least, of the Size of the Universe videos, this one has some justification for all the religious discussion going on the comments section (No, really, of the several videos on this subject I've checked today, there always are religious discussions going on).

[RRoan]

That animation is awesome. I had no idea that Canis Majoris was that fucking huge - it makes Betelgeuse look tiny, and the sun is nothing more than a speck next to it.

Canis Majoris is just absurdly gigantic. Here's a direct comparison between it and the sun, just to better illustrate how absurd it is.

[Bedlam]

That animation is awesome. I had no idea that Canis Majoris was that fucking huge - it makes Betelgeuse look tiny, and the sun is nothing more than a speck next to it.

Canis Majoris is just absurdly gigantic. Here's a direct comparison between it and the sun, just to better illustrate how absurd it is.

Wow, thats staggeringly massive.

Is there a maximum size for stars? Is canis near or at it or are there even bigger monstrosities out there?

[The Spartan]

If I remember right, it has something to do with the universe expanding at a speed faster than that of light, so while light has only had about 14 billion years to get to Earth, the actual universe is far vaster.

That animation is awesome. I had no idea that Canis Majoris was that fucking huge - it makes Betelgeuse look tiny, and the sun is nothing more than a speck next to it.

Okay, this is where my lower level of understanding comes into play. How can the universe be expanding faster than light? How do we know that it's doing so? How do we know the magnitude of it doing so?

Obviously, we can't observe it, so I would guess that there are calculations that require it to make sense?

[Surlethe]

Is there a maximum size for stars? Is canis near or at it or are there even bigger monstrosities out there?

According to Wiki, Canis Majoris is between 15 and 25 solar masses. The theoretical upper limit for a star is, IIRC, about 200 solar masses*, above which the star blows itself apart when fusion ignites.

* Just glanced through my astro notes and couldn't find the reference, so don't take this as gospel truth.

[Darth Holbytlan]

As a sidenote, I wanted to link that old video where the point of view zooms out from quantum scales to the whole universe (the one with concentric squares representing each order of magnitude), but can't find it. Anyone knows where it is?

The name of the short is "Powers of Ten". It should be pretty easy to search up a copy from that. (At the moment it's the top link when I search on YouTube.)

[Hawkwings]

wait wait, Canis Majoris is absurdly huge and yet only masses 25 times as much as our sun? That would mean Sol is roughly 60 billion times more dense than Canis Majoris.

That's it, I'm going to bed. My mind has been boggled enough today.

[Count Chocula]

Nothing between neutrinos and strings? NOTHING from 10-24 to 10-34? Either our theories are wrong or we just can't measure that small. IIRC, everything below the level of neutrinos is theory and math, and not observation.

Animation is nice, but "Mars, Bringer of War" by Holst would have been nicer music than the auditory pabulum served up at the site.

[adam_grif]

Okay, this is where my lower level of understanding comes into play. How can the universe be expanding faster than light? How do we know that it's doing so? How do we know the magnitude of it doing so?

Obviously, we can't observe it, so I would guess that there are calculations that require it to make sense?

I'll take a crack at it until somebody more qualified comes along.

We can measure the distance to stars, galaxies etc then over time measure how these distances change and the rate at which they are changing. Turns out that distant galaxies are moving away from us very quickly, and speeding up to boot. As for how this is possible, it's the whole "there lightspeed limit only applies to things moving through space, not to space moving" shtick. Although distant galaxies are receding faster-than-light, it's not that the galaxies themselves are moving FTL, it's that the space-time they exist in is expanding, and they're being dragged along for the ride. Imagine it as a loaf of bread expanding in the oven, carrying raisins apart.

As for why, that's a bit more ambiguous. Dark Energy/Matter, as I understand it, was a label given to "whatever that thing that is causing universal expansion to accelerate is". It accounts for the missing mass/energy that would be required for the universe to be behaving the way it is.

[cosmicalstorm]

These videos, images and so on always makes me calm. I have the HUDF printed on a 1x1 meter piece of vinyl cardboard. I look at it every day without ever coming closer to understanding how huge and small it is.

As a sidenote, I wanted to link that old video where the point of view zooms out from quantum scales to the whole universe (the one with concentric squares representing each order of magnitude), but can't find it. Anyone knows where it is?

I found a similar video depicting the voyage at light speed from Earth to the limits of the visible universe, but was kind of turned off when the last thing the narrator says is "...it is a spectacular tapestry, so vast and diverse in its design, that the power of its creator must truly surpass all human understanding." (here)
At least, of the Size of the Universe videos, this one has some justification for all the religious discussion going on the comments section (No, really, of the several videos on this subject I've checked today, there always are religious discussions going on).

That wasn't the speed of light though, they zoom past all the planets in a couple of seconds, you'd need to travel many times c for that to be possible. A video showing the journey out of our solar system at light speed would need to be at least hours long, a couple of months if you wanted to pass the outer asteroid swarms.

[Big Orange]

Here's a similar Universe scale chart.

[mr friendly guy]

What I want to know is how the estimte the size of the universe at 93 billion Light years. I can understand that we should only see 14 billion light years, but I am interested in how they derive that figure. If anything it would be useful for sci fi debates on FTL speeds.