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Tag Archives: scale
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
The Incredible Scale of the Universe
There’s really no other way to phrase it: the universe is enormous. With our current level of technology, it might as well be an infinite space, but there is a limit to our universe. Our best guess as to the size of the universe right now is that the universe is around 93 billion light … Continue reading The Incredible Scale of the Universe → Continue reading
The Incredible Scale of the Universe
There’s really no other way to phrase it: the universe is enormous. With our current level of technology, it might as well be an infinite space, but there is a limit to our universe. Our best guess as to the size of the universe right now is that the universe is around 93 billion light … Continue reading The Incredible Scale of the Universe → Continue reading
Speck of Dust and Cosmic Sand (Blog #1)
As of the time of writing, Voyager 1 is over 21.1 billion kilometers away from its launch point of Earth. This distance seems long to most, but in the grand scheme of things it is almost nothing at all. This distance represents only 0.2% of that of a lightyear, meaning that a photon released from … Continue reading Speck of Dust and Cosmic Sand (Blog #1) → Continue reading
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Tagged astro2110, blog1, scale
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