APOD: The Scale of the Universe: Interactive (2014 Jan 12)

[tomatoherd]

so in other words, they don't have a clue as to how big the universe is?
It might be exceed the HDF perspective by as much as planet Earth exceeds my view of it with binoculars from a high hill, no?
Or be infinite outright.

[DavidLeodis]

It's a fascinating interactive feature. I was quite surprised though at the 'Total Human Height' that appears at about 10¹⁰ which is I assume an estimate if all humans there have ever been were stood up in one column, but even so it does seem exceedingly much higher than I would have guessed!

The explanation to it caught my interest but just what is 'Minecraft World' that appears at about 10^7.6

[Chris Peterson]

so in other words, they don't have a clue as to how big the universe is?

That about sums it up.

[Filbo]

The bigger error is in assigning any value for the size of the Universe, which is somewhere between the size of the observable universe and infinitely large... and no current theory allows that to be narrowed down very much.

Hmmm, you can claim that as a philosphical error. I claim mine as a numerical error. I won't propose to place a scale against the two and tell you which error is larger. I do presume the Huangs had *some* particular hypothesis in mind when they gave the 1.6e11 LY estimate for the size of the universe.

>Bela<

[Chris Peterson]

It's a fascinating interactive feature. I was quite surprised though at the 'Total Human Height' that appears at about 10¹⁰ which is I assume an estimate if all humans there have ever been were stood up in one column, but even so it does seem exceedingly much higher than I would have guessed!

More like the combined height of all the humans alive today. Figure an average adult height of 1.7 meters, times 7 billion, you get 1.8 x 10¹⁰ m. Knock that down a bit for a fairly large number of kids, and 10¹⁰ meters sounds just about right. The number would have to be over an order of magnitude larger to account for all the humans who have ever lived- more than 100 billion.

[DavidLeodis]

Thanks Chris for that explanation, which is appreciated.

[geckzilla]

The explanation to it caught my interest but just what is 'Minecraft World' that appears at about 10^7.6

A sandbox video game which uses voxels to display the world. The world used to be infinite in the sense that if the player traveled too far in any one direction, old chunks of land would be overwritten at some ludicrous distance from the map origin but now there are invisible walls. I've never bothered to travel to the edge...
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/The_Overworld#Sizes

Sandbox means that some people build giant CPUs while others choose to recreate the world of Westeros from Game of Thrones. I've logged on to the Westeros one since it's a multiplayer server. People come from all over to help build it. Except for the slow chunk loading and the fact that my computer wants to die when I increase the draw distance to very far, it's amazing.

[Beyond]

I don't let those kinds of things anywhere near my cave

[DavidLeodis]

The explanation to it caught my interest but just what is 'Minecraft World' that appears at about 10^7.6

A sandbox video game which uses voxels to display the world. The world used to be infinite in the sense that if the player traveled too far in any one direction, old chunks of land would be overwritten at some ludicrous distance from the map origin but now there are invisible walls. I've never bothered to travel to the edge...
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/The_Overworld#Sizes

Sandbox means that some people build giant CPUs while others choose to recreate the world of Westeros from Game of Thrones. I've logged on to the Westeros one since it's a multiplayer server. People come from all over to help build it. Except for the slow chunk loading and the fact that my computer wants to die when I increase the draw distance to very far, it's amazing.

Thanks for that geckzilla. I had never heard of 'Minecraft World' until I saw it mentioned in the interactive feature. It seems (to me) likely to be very difficult and as I struggled even playing the very basic Pong tennis video game when that came out in the early 1970's I would have no chance with today's interactive games! Now just where did I put my abacus.

[BDanielMayfield]

This is great. Does anyone know the age of the Huang twins?

[neufer]

This is great. Does anyone know the age of the Huang twins?

• Just 14 years old.

[b][color=#0000FF]Michael and Cary Huang (Cary is on right in blue T-shirt).[/color][/b]

---

'The Scale of the Universe,' by Two Teenage Brothers
by Ned Potter, ABC News

<<"Scale of the Universe 2" was created by Cary Huang, a 14-year-old ninth grader from Moraga, Calif., with technical help from his twin brother Michael.

"My seventh grade science teacher showed us a size comparison video on cells, and I thought it was fascinating. I decided to make my own interactive version that included a much larger range of sizes," said Cary in an email forwarded by his mother. "It was not a school project -- just for fun. However, my science teacher loved it so much she showed [it] to the class! My brother, Michael, helped me put it on the internet."

Cary said he worked on the project, on and off, for a year and a half, getting information from Wikipedia and astronomy books. It is now spreading virally online. Cary invites people to correct any errors they find. This is his second version, he said; the first had less information in it, and the graphics needed work. "We're not sure what we want to do after we finish school, although we're both interested in computer programming and animation," said Cary. "And astronomy is also cool!" Asked if he thought there was a lesson to be learned from the project, Cary wrote, "I would like to say that humankind is a very small part of the universe we live in. There could be so much more out there, but we just don't know it yet." >>

[BDanielMayfield]

Thanks Art.

That makes it even more impressive, doesn’t it?

[Beyond]

Now just where did I put my abacus.

You know how to use an abacus

[Cousin Ricky]

The bigger error is in assigning any value for the size of the Universe, which is somewhere between the size of the observable universe and infinitely large... and no current theory allows that to be narrowed down very much.

I gave them a pass on that because the pop-up bubble at the end does admit that they don't know.

[Dancing Bear]

I found one glaring error. There is no such thing as a United States Penny. The United States has never had a Penny. We have Cents. The Penny is a British coin. This is a sucker bet that you can make.

[geckzilla]

I found one glaring error. There is no such thing as a United States Penny. The United States has never had a Penny. We have Cents. The Penny is a British coin. This is a sucker bet that you can make.

I guess you've never heard of a homonym. Penny, cent, whatever. It's the same thing.

[Chris Peterson]

I found one glaring error. There is no such thing as a United States Penny. The United States has never had a Penny. We have Cents. The Penny is a British coin. This is a sucker bet that you can make.

The same could be said for nickels and quarters. That doesn't change the fact that a one cent piece is called a "penny", and that this is a perfectly reasonable and correct thing to call it. Heck, even the U.S. mint calls them pennies all over their site.

[Beyond]

I found one glaring error. There is no such thing as a United States Penny. The United States has never had a Penny. We have Cents. The Penny is a British coin. This is a sucker bet that you can make.

The same could be said for nickels and quarters. That doesn't change the fact that a one cent piece is called a "penny", and that this is a perfectly reasonable and correct thing to call it. Heck, even the U.S. mint calls them pennies all over their site.

That makes a lot of cents.

[neufer]

<<To "spend a penny" in British idiom means to urinate. The etymology of the phrase is literal; some public toilets used to be coin-operated, with a pre-decimal penny being the charge levied. The first recorded charge of a penny for use of a toilet was at The Great Exhibition of 1851. Eventually, around the same time as the introduction of decimal coinage, British Rail gradually introduced better public toilets with the name Superloo and the much higher charge of 6d (21⁄2p).

The first known record of the phrase "a penny for your thoughts" is found in a 1547 collection of contemporary English language phrases compiled by John Heywood called A dialogue conteinying the nomber in effect of all the proverbes in the Englishe tongue. A possibly related idiomatic expression, "my two cents", may use the low-value denomination to figuratively devalue the speaker's opinions for the sake of irony or humility.>>

[Beyond]

2p or not 2p is not the question. The question is-->Where 2p and how much is it gonna cost you.

[empty_space]

Well that's an amazing animation on space.

Here's a (sort of) complimentary video on time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0

and a suitably late comment on the post too!

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Well that's an amazing animation on space.

Here's a (sort of) complimentary video on time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0

and a suitably late comment on the post too!

. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0

• Many a Tyrannosaurus Rex is found in Montana.
  
  Perhaps the Disney studios could make an animation
  of Disney protegee Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus
  fighting a Montana Tyrannosaurus Rex.

[b][color=#0000FF]Rochus Misch as a Scharführer[/color][/b]

---

<<Rochus Misch (29 July 1917 – 5 September 2013) was a German Oberscharführer (senior squad leader) in the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler during World War II. He served as a courier, bodyguard and telephone operator for German leader Adolf Hitler from 1940 to 1945. He was the last remaining survivor among the occupants of the Führerbunker in the final days of the war in Europe.

Misch was born in Alt-Schalkowitz near Oppeln in the Province of Silesia. His father, a construction worker, died of wounds sustained in World War I. His widowed mother died of pneumonia when he was three, and he grew up with his grandparents. He worked as a painter. Misch married his wife Gerda on New Year's Eve, 1942. They had a daughter, Brigitta Jacob-Engelken, who worked as an architect and supported Jewish causes. After he returned from the Soviet Union, Brigitta learned from her maternal grandmother that Brigitta's mother was Jewish, making Brigitta Jewish as well (according to Jewish tradition). Misch refused to acknowledge it.

As a junior member of Hitler's permanent bodyguard, Misch travelled with Hitler throughout the war. On 16 January 1945, following the Wehrmacht's defeat in the Battle of the Bulge, Misch and the rest of Hitler's personal staff moved into the Führerbunker in Berlin. He did not leave it for any significant period of time until the war ended in May 1945. Misch handled all of the direct communication from the bunker. Misch was loyal to Hitler to the end, saying "He was a wonderful boss".

Hitler committed suicide on 30 April. Misch witnessed the discovery of the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun, and was present (in the bunker complex) during the time when Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda poisoned their six young children and committed suicide on 1 May 1945. Misch fled the bunker on 2 May only hours before the Red Army seized it but was captured shortly thereafter. Misch was brought to the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where he was tortured in an attempt to extract information regarding Hitler's exact fate. Misch spent nine years in Soviet forced labour camps.

After his release from captivity in 1953, Misch returned to Berlin, arriving home on New Year's Eve 1953, where he lived two miles from the Führerbunker. He finally obtained credit backed by wealthy German philanthropists to buy out a painting and wallpaper business. He ran this modest business successfully, and during the early Allied occupation of Berlin also became involved in the making of peanut butter for American troops. His memoir in German, Der letzte Zeuge (The Last Witness), was published in 2008. Misch lived in Berlin in the same house he moved into when he was released by the Soviets. Misch died in Berlin on 5 September 2013 at the age of 96.>>

[space931]

I was absolutely enthralled with the "Sxale of the Universe" post, and shared it with several online associates. I wanted to post a thank you to the Huangs for their inpired creativity, and sought ought this forum for the first time to do so. Here, I was "flabbergasted" to actually see the Huang twins - ! I had no idea of their age. The future of our world may be in better hands than I ever imagined...!

[aildoux]

Great. Love it. Just hope it could go fullscreen. But I go back to it anyways. Thanks.

[LarryP]

Very interesting and informative presentation!
I noticed though, that the description for "The Sun" says:
"20,000 times more solar energy hits the earth than the human race uses per year"

In what period of time does this much solar energy hit the earth? I think this sentence is missing the units of time necessary for the comparison.