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Astronomy Buff

Universcale: A Flash App to Put You In Your Place

by Tony on March 31st, 2007

“Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?”
“I think so Brain, but if Jimmy cracks corn, and no one cares, why does he keep doing it?”

Sometimes thinking about how big the universe is hurts my brain. That’s why I’m so glad someone at Nikon (wtf?!) decided to take on the arduous and unenviable task of helping me visualize it.

I was just playing with Universcale, a cool Flash application that spans 42 magnitudes in size, from 10^-15 meters (femtometers) up to the size of the universe, which sadly, it reports as 13.7 billion light years. The actual value is closer to 46.5 billion, but who cares, right? Big is big.

This is a great way to kind of play around with the relative sizes of things and is a good visualization tool for trying to imagine the true scale of things in our universe. Here’s a screenshot, but you’ll need to head over to the site and play with it for yourself to really appreciate it.

Universcale
Image Credit: Universcale

Go to Universcale and prepare to be humbled and put in your place.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, here’s the complete list of ‘are you pondering what I’m pondering…”.

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POSTED IN: astronomy education

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