Life On Life On Life
December 15, 2013 2:20 PM   Subscribe

Once you’ve picked your jaw from the floor, here’s what you’re looking at: the final stop of this zoom, which spans multiple orders of magnitude, is a little bacterium.
posted by monospace (20 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

posted by Thing at 2:33 PM on December 15, 2013 [14 favorites]


Wow. That's way more effective than some koan about one hand clapping.
posted by ignignokt at 2:46 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


Very cool.

Though I'm a little bummed that the article mentioned a Reddit user who came up with a vaguely amusing description for the image before the guy who actually created it.
posted by benito.strauss at 3:04 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


I would like to complain.

Things exist that have eyes like that.
posted by Drexen at 3:27 PM on December 15, 2013 [5 favorites]


That diatom looks just like a little monocle
posted by theodolite at 3:33 PM on December 15, 2013 [2 favorites]


Psh, crustacean. They probably just fished one of my used Biore strips out of the trash.
posted by Apropos of Something at 4:07 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


http://www.powersof10.com/film
posted by infinitewindow at 4:23 PM on December 15, 2013


Yo dawg I herd you like life
posted by dhens at 4:24 PM on December 15, 2013


I wanted this to start at the edge of the universe and then allow me to control the zooming. Otherwise, still cool.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:22 PM on December 15, 2013 [2 favorites]


I don't mind the biggest critters, and I don't mind the tiny critters, it's the beasties in between that are horrifying.
posted by BlueHorse at 5:43 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


There are 34 angels dancing on the head of a pin.

But how many angels are dancing on the angels?
posted by cacofonie at 5:58 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


I had been led to believe bacteria were much more numerous and more densely populated.
posted by straight at 6:04 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


That would amount to a really dense population from the point of view of a human. It only appears sparse because we're zoomed in so far.
posted by voltairemodern at 7:10 PM on December 15, 2013


Diatoms are beautiful and remove more CO2 from Earth's atmosphere than its rain forests.
posted by cenoxo at 7:52 PM on December 15, 2013 [6 favorites]


That really looks like no frog I've ever seen. Did I read that wrong?
posted by the_royal_we at 10:50 PM on December 15, 2013 [1 favorite]


Gorgeous!
posted by abecedarium radiolarium at 4:29 AM on December 16, 2013


That would amount to a really dense population from the point of view of a human. It only appears sparse because we're zoomed in so far.

But, like, where's the other half of it's parent? The other 3/4 ths of their grandparent? Do bacteria jump around, multiple body-lengths at a time? Where's it going to find another bacteria to swap DNA with?
posted by straight at 8:10 AM on December 16, 2013


For some crazy reason, this really reminds of of Ren and Stimpy.
posted by Static Vagabond at 10:40 AM on December 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


and now, I feel cooties everywhere.
posted by stormpooper at 11:59 AM on December 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Did you fuckers break the universe? I clicked on the "scale of the universe" link on the ugly-critter zoom page and it's not working.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 2:59 PM on December 16, 2013


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