Power of Ten

January 30, 2002 3:40 AM

Power of Ten View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.
posted by Tarrama (19 comments total)

That's fantastic. Great link!
posted by explodingfist at 3:55 AM on January 30, 2002

Yes. The universe is really really big. Many people have pointed this out, Douglas Adams most eloquently. Er, am I missing something?
posted by Hypnerotomachia at 4:12 AM on January 30, 2002

Yes. You're missing the fact that this is very, very cool.
posted by Optamystic at 4:29 AM on January 30, 2002

More at Powersof10.com, including the powers of Eames.
posted by liam at 4:34 AM on January 30, 2002

The point of this is not just that the universe is "really really big". This piece gives you an actual scale on which to judge the really big, and the really small.

It's normally only scientists who have an intuitive sense of the relative magnitudes of things like galaxies, planets, cells and atoms. This lovely concept lets your average layman pick up the same ideas.

And, yes, it is cool.
posted by chrismear at 4:37 AM on January 30, 2002

I wonder why they redid this instead of just using the original? And I wonder how many times it's been redone? I remember seeing the movie (which was the first remake of the original) in elementary school, I think.

For completeness's sake, here's the Eames office site.
posted by rodii at 5:11 AM on January 30, 2002

A related MeFi thread, where this was mentioned previously. (I was pretty sure this was a doublepost, but I couldn't find it outside of the above.) A lot of "scale" type games there.
posted by dhartung at 6:46 AM on January 30, 2002

sorry, nothing showed up when I searched.
posted by Tarrama at 7:57 AM on January 30, 2002

Tarrama - it doesn't really count as a double post if it was just mentioned in a comment, so don't worry. Even if it was, I still think it was a good post - the neatest part is the transition from 10^-10 to 10^-11: you're in the middle of the electron cloud, you zoom in one step and all of a sudden there's nothing but a single speck floating in a sea of black.
Also, there is a very similar exhibit in the new planetarium at the Museum of Natural History in NYC.
posted by skwm at 8:13 AM on January 30, 2002

And aren't we human beings right in the middle, in size, of the scale?
I read that somewhere, I think.
posted by y2karl at 8:44 AM on January 30, 2002

Yes. Not a coincidence, I don't think.
posted by rodii at 9:01 AM on January 30, 2002

And aren't we human beings right in the middle, in size, of the scale?
I read that somewhere, I think.
Yes. Not a coincidence, I don't think.

In the middle how? Based on what we can actually image, or based on what we can theorize? Either way, I don't really think we're in the middle. I think the scale of the universe is still a couple orders of magnitude bigger than us, than the scale of an electron is smaller than us. Then, on the other end, there are plenty of things we talk about that really have no spatial extent, making us relatively infinitely gigantic.

Regardless, just because we currently happen to be able to look as far "up" as "down" is probably more a function of us than the universe.

Don't make too much of the fairytale-esque "on a middle sized planet, near a middle sized star, in a middle sized galaxy, lived a middle sized race..." It's fun for Douglas Adams types, but a misleading view of the cosmos.
posted by badstone at 9:58 AM on January 30, 2002

cool link. still can't get my head round it though.
posted by Frasermoo at 10:18 AM on January 30, 2002

If you like this then you will love Celestia, free planetarium software for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows that lets you fly freely from planet to planet to star and even outside the galaxy. It's like a starship simulator, and it's pretty mind-blowing the first time the stars start to parallax around you as you speed up. No red-shift though — hey, that'd be a neat option!
posted by nicwolff at 10:32 AM on January 30, 2002

Thanks nicwolff...Celestia is so cool!

You guys rule...
posted by black8 at 1:03 PM on January 30, 2002

Let's assume that we are the middle of things and that everything larger than us extends to infinity and that everything smaller than us extends to negative infinity. That makes us exactly zero, which is of course, very appropriate for whoever the hell thought we were in the middle to begin with.
posted by bloggboy at 2:24 PM on January 30, 2002

I haven't seen kokogiak around lately, but I just wandered over to that other thread that dhartung mentioned, which took me to his site, and I just want to say : you rock, sir.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:01 AM on January 31, 2002

I'm not dead yet. Maybe a bit stunned, but still alive, thanks.
posted by kokogiak at 3:20 PM on January 31, 2002

Regardless, just because we currently happen to be able to look as far "up" as "down" is probably more a function of us than the universe.

Yes, that was my point.
posted by rodii at 7:12 PM on January 31, 2002