The scale of the universe, continued

Phil Plait pointed to another great illustration of the immensity of the universe, this time coming from the Hayden Planetarium, which is part of the American Museum of Natural History, which starts at the Tibetan plateau and accelerates out to the cosmic microwave background before returning to Earth:

Now, while this is the best comprehensive video illustration of the scale of the universe that I have seen, it’s worth noting while everything is scaled accurately, the actual scales involved and their relationship to each other, are truly incomprehensible by a human mind.  The fact that the “camera” starts moving faster than the speed of light shortly after showing the orbit of the moon should drive that point home.

A worthwhile Bloggingheads discussion

In the most recent Bloggingheads.tv diavlog, Razib Khan interviews David Sloan Wilson about his area of expertise, multi-level selection theory.

The Big Picture’s HST Advent Calendar

It’s the first day of December and thus a time to drag out the Advent calendars.  The Boston Globe’s Big Picture site decided to repeat a concept from last year’s Christmas season: an Advent calendar that present an image from the Hubble Space Telescope each day until Christmas.  So, be sure to keep tabs on this page during the holiday season as the Big Picture fills in the pictures once a day until Christmas.

The scale of the universe

Not to long ago, I pointed to a rather effective illustration of the scale of the microscopic from cells to atom courtesy of the University of Utah.  In my opinion, though, it is the scales of the large that are truly mind blowing, but unlike the scales of the small, there isn’t one illustration that really gets the point across, but that doesn’t mean there is a scarcity of effective illustrations.

To start off, here’s something I made myself to show the size relationship between the eight planets of our solar system:

I find it humbling to see that Jupiter has a permanent storm that is as wide north to south as the Earth is and even wider from east to west.  Imagining the immensity of the Earth is a task in itself.  Seeing the Earth as a relatively small planet really drives home how limited our viewpoint is.

But what takes it to the next level is not the size of objects on the grand scale, but the distances between them.

A sense of scale

Via both Andrew Gelman and Phil Plait, I noticed a flash representation of the scale of powers of 10 at the microscopic end (from 12pt font to a carbon atom) from the University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center, so I thought I’d pass it on.

A view of home

Yesterday, the Rosetta spacecraft, which was commissioned by ESA to study the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko captured this view of the Earth as part of its third and final flyby of our home planet with its OSIRIS instrument:

I suspect that more images will come as the spacecraft completes its flyby, but it’s always nice to have new images of our home world and this one is not a disappointment.

Hat tip: Space Gizmo

Another lovely photo set from the Big Picture

The Boston Globe’s Big Picture website continues to churn out interesting photo collections in all their 990 pixel-wide glory. Today, they have a collection of satellite images from various sources within NASA such as this one of algae blooms in the Black Sea:

Click for the larger version on the Big Picture website

NASA: Olympic pollution controls worked

Pollution was one of the issues vigorously discussed in the run up to and during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Well, according to a survey done by researchers as NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center:

During the two months when restrictions were in place, the levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) — a noxious gas resulting from fossil fuel combustion (primarily in cars, trucks, and power plants) — plunged nearly 50 percent. Likewise, levels of carbon monoxide (CO) fell about 20 percent.

Now, drawing attention to the graphics released with the report, it appears that there was a marked increase in NO₂ concentrations outside of Shanghai as well:

July:

August:

Hat tip: James Fallows

God is a jackrabbit

From an image recently released by a team working with the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes probing the center of our galaxy:

As you can see, the very center of our galaxy is inhabited by a giant spectral jackrabbit, who I have no choice but to assume is the ruler of the universe. Fortunately I happen to have been born in a 兔年, 1987, according the Chinese zodiac, so I can hope for a great deal of power and influence in the future.

Hubble Advent Calendar

If you want to see some very nice pictures, check out the Hubble Advent Calendar at The Boston Globe’s The Big Picture.  Today’s image is the one above, though it’s rotated 90 degrees and is cropped to get the highest resolution possible at the 990 pixel width that characterizes all the photos shown on the site.

For a more direct look at the library of Hubble images over the years, there’s always the HubbleSite Picture Album.