Back in 2010 I came across a really neat visualization tool designed to demonstrate scale in our universe. After being reminded about it by WIRED, I searched for it again and stumbled across an updated 2012 version created by Cary and Michael Huang. I thought I would share this tool with all of you to either just explore or for use as an educational tool.
My favorite take-away from exploring this tool is both how truly massive the universe is thought to be and how miniscule the building blocks of it are. To describe a proton as being one femtometer in diameter is all well and good, but until you zoom through the intervening scales it is hard to grasp just how small that is.
Also, I never realized that the Japanese spider crab and the Tyrannosaurus rex were close to the same size! Post your own interesting finds or revelations in the comments below.
The Scale of the Universe 2 [HTwins]
Image: HTwins.com screen capture
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