The Known Universe

"When the internet irritates." No, really? That's never happened to me.:D

Thanks, Esav.
 
aaaaand, I feel really really small......

I love those representations of the universe people put together....never cease to amaze me! Its always so neat to see all the different orders of magnitude the universe is built from......love it....
 
heavy_-j said:
aaaaand, I feel really really small......

I love those representations of the universe people put together....never cease to amaze me! Its always so neat to see all the different orders of magnitude the universe is built from......love it....
Click to expand...

Our universe is just one part, of one atom in a giant's big toe.:D
 
Thanks for finding that one.
 
I can't be the only one that gets that uneasy feeling in my body and mind realizing how insignificant the planet we're on is in the whole scope of the universe, let alone the unknown.

Bleh, I hate that feeling, need to be down to Earth, much better feeling.
 
Not insignificant at all, just ... small. :)

We may be the only creatures in the universe to realize there IS a universe.
 
timcsaw said:
Wow.

How small is "small"? How big is "big"?

Thanks Esav.
Click to expand...

The noted physicist Joel Primack, originator of the Cold Dark Matter theory of dark energy and dark matter—which is collecting support as more experimental evidence comes in—says this: “We’re also in the middle of all possible size scales. The human size scale is almost exactly in the middle between the smallest possible size, something physicists call a Planck length, and the entire visible universe, the largest thing we can see. This must be true of all intelligent life.”

Thanks, Esav.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Not insignificant at all, just ... small. :)

We may be the only creatures in the universe to realize there IS a universe.
Click to expand...

I read somewhere once that the Universe may have to be as big as it is just in order for conditions to be right for life to exist on Earth.

Hm, I'm not sure I wrote that very clearly. According to what I read; in order for all the cosmic forces to be in the right balance to support advanced life on even a single planet the Universe has to be as big as it is.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
Not insignificant at all, just ... small. :)

We may be the only creatures in the universe to realize there IS a universe.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I was thinking... out of all that, it is only we with the capacity to make a toaster.

I'd like to see this in reverse, as well, down through the sub atomic "rabbit's hole".

Thanks!
 
Sort of on the opposite end of this, consider that most of what we consist of; our bodies, our homes, our knives...Is composed of "nothing".

What we think of as "solid" matter is anything but; the spaces between subatomic particles are comparatively vast. Someone likened the distance in scale between an atomic nucleus and it's orbiting bits as a housefly sitting in one football stadium with another housefly sitting in another stadium alongside...

That's why a neutron star can be only a mile or so in diameter, yet be as massive as our Sun....All those spaces between particles have been "squished" by enormous gravitational forces.
 
mwerner said:
What we think of as "solid" matter is anything but; the spaces between subatomic particles are comparatively vast. Someone likened the distance in scale between an atomic nucleus and it's orbiting bits as a housefly sitting in one football stadium with another housefly sitting in another stadium alongside...
Click to expand...

See Powers of Ten.
 
I think that the universe is arranged in such a way that life will eventually develop everywhere that conditions are favorable for it to do so. Of all the extreme conditions that exist on this planet, we have found life everywhere we looked for it.



Also, I don't think that video shows the universe to be anywhere nearly big enough: The universe is expanding in all directions at the same time. We can see 13.7 billion light years, but it's a little older than that, let's call it 14. That means that the furthest place we can see can also see 14 billion light years in all directions. So then, the minimum diameter of the universe is 56 billion light years, or, at least twice as large as the video shows.
 
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When I was in high school, the idea of a "personal computer" was unimaginable. In fact, our Encyclopedia Britannica had no entry for anything like that. The internet was beyond even science fiction.
 
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