Tag Archives: scale

Blog 1: Scale of the Universe

It is difficult to truly grasp the size and scale of our universe. And while using units like light years might be helpful in some cases, it can also be helpful to put things in a scale that is more common in everyday life. This image helps me understand the scale of the universe in […] Continue reading

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The Universe is HUGE

Size: Planet vs. Solar System. vs. Galaxy For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the vastness of the Universe and how everything around us has been untouched by humans. Everyone lives on Earth (unless you are an alien…). Yet, Earth is only one of eight planets in our solar system. […] Continue reading

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Final Thoughts..

Blog 8? That doesn’t sound right. It feels like yesterday I designed my website and wrote my first post. Throughout the course of Astronomy 2110 I have explored the universe in many aspects. What sticks with me most, however, is how exactly we got to our current deep understanding of the universe.  Would Kepler have […] Continue reading

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The Scale of the Universe and Us

     Reading the graphic in the textbook called “Our Cosmic Address”, I got a sense for the first time of how small of a planet we live on. Earth is a typical planet rotating by a typical star we call the Sun which is only one of billions of stars in the Milky Way which is […] Continue reading

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Pondering Scale

The Video “Powers of 10” impacted me so profoundly as I viewed it for the first time that I took a minute after watching to consider how insignificant we technically are in this universe. Earth may be the setting for every idea, individual or event that we know of, but there are infinite bounds of […] Continue reading

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“Powers of Ten” and the Scale of the Universe

I didn’t remember until I started the video, but I had seen “Powers of Ten” before in some science class many years ago. This staying power, evidenced by my recollection and the countless Youtube comments saying similar things, is proof of how mind-blowing the concept of scale is. Scale determines what we can comprehend andContinue reading ““Powers of Ten” and the Scale of the Universe” Continue reading

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Speed of light and distance

It is a nearly universal maxim of science fiction that faster than light (FTL) travel must exist. Let us take a look at why this is universally necessary for the sake of a good story by comparing the size and scope of both our real universe and a few fictional universes to how long traversalContinue reading “Speed of light and distance” Continue reading

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The Universe as the United States

If there’s one straightforward lesson from astronomy, it’s that we’re tiny. We’re small compared to the Earth’s vast size, which is small compared to the sun, which is tiny compared to the space that contains our solar system, which is a tiny dot in one arm of the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of … Continue reading The Universe as the United States Continue reading

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The Size of the Universe, Relative to the Size of a Picnicker

The video begins with a man and a woman out on a picnic, then begins zooming out farther and farther. They start with a focus image 1 x 1 meter wide, then zoom out to a field of vision 10 times larger every ten seconds. So, the first zoom out brings the image to 10m … Continue reading The Size of the Universe, Relative to the Size of a Picnicker Continue reading

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A Speck on a Speck in a Speck in a Speck…

Humans are very arrogant creatures, and we often forget just how small we are in relation to the rest of the Universe. So much so that our units of measurement are very impractical to use on a larger scale, so we will mostly be using light seconds, minutes, hours, day, months and years to talk about […] Continue reading

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