Ok so i new compared to lots of things in space we are incomprehensibly small. but this gif makes that slightly easier to comprehend....never mind I still cant comprehend it.

the gif is way too big to put up here so I have it up on a hosting site

This should work

I think there is a delay on it starting so If it just sitting there showing you the earth just be patient. It is worth it.

Every time I see size comparisons like that, my mind is boggled.

Yeah, thats cool and all, But check out this advertisement that was on the page.
They are getting good at making ads, I almost clicked it!

At 9/17/09 01:25 AM, Guest8792 wrote: Thanks for teaching me something I learned in Grade 3.

we all did you aren't special.

My point was it is so incomprehensible you never really get it, because you can't really wrap your brain around numbers like that.

At 9/17/09 01:26 AM, GeneralAC wrote: Yeah, thats cool and all, But check out this advertisement that was on the page.
They are getting good at making ads, I almost clicked it!

Yep they are getting better

First post in almost 2 years!

At 9/17/09 01:26 AM, GeneralAC wrote: Yeah, thats cool and all, But check out this advertisement that was on the page.
They are getting good at making ads, I almost clicked it!

Wow, they must be pretty fucking desperate.

At 9/17/09 01:28 AM, Alamadu wrote: because you can't really wrap your brain around numbers like that.

I can.

VY Canis Majoris is incredibly large compared to our planet but it is still a small speck on an amoeba when compared to the observable universe as a whole, which is roughly 93 billion light years in diameter (in other words, it would take light 93 billion years to go from one end to the other, and the Universe is only 13.2 billion years old)

And the observable universe itself is probably extremely small compared to the rest. I think I read somewhere that some scientists believe that the entire universe is so large, that if the Observable Universe was the size of a quarter, the entire universe would be the size of the planet Earth. Since your average quarter is about 1 inch in diameter and the Earth is roughly 8,000 miles in diameter, or approximately 506,880,000 inches, meaning that the entire universe would be 506,880,000 times larger than the observable universe of 93 billion miles, meaning the universe would be 47,139,840,000,000,000,000 light years in diameter.

At 9/17/09 02:08 AM, Presidentjlh wrote: VY Canis Majoris is incredibly large compared to our planet but it is still a small speck on an amoeba when compared to the observable universe as a whole, which is roughly 93 billion light years in diameter (in other words, it would take light 93 billion years to go from one end to the other, and the Universe is only 13.2 billion years old)

*93 billion years traveling at the speed of light

At 9/17/09 02:14 AM, GayDorf wrote:

At 9/17/09 02:08 AM, Presidentjlh wrote: it would take light 93 billion years to go from one end to the other

*93 billion years traveling at the speed of light

ahh, yes, damn relativity keeps fucking it all up.

At 9/17/09 02:14 AM, GayDorf wrote:
*93 billion years traveling at the speed of light

Yeah he is right 93 billion light years is the size.

And as for the time that would be the definition of light years as units

At 9/17/09 02:21 AM, Alamadu wrote:

At 9/17/09 02:14 AM, GayDorf wrote:
*93 billion years traveling at the speed of light

Yeah he is right 93 billion light years is the size.

And as for the time that would be the definition of light years as units

Unless you're defending GayDorf, actually, I was wrong originally. A light-year is the distance that would normally be covered if one travelled at the speed of light. However, thanks to Einstein's theory of relativity, this is not the case in reality. When one approaches speeds close to the speed of light, time tends to slow down. It has been stated that if one were to travel to the Andromeda Galaxy (roughly 2.5 million light-years away) at the speed of light it would actually only take you 50 years, at least from your viewpoint. In actuality, 2.5 million years would have passed by on Earth, thus everyone you love would have been dead for a very long time, however, you would only be 50 years older.

Isn't science a wonderful mindfuck? :D

I know I've seen such comparisons before, but they still get me.

We're frikken tiny!

At 9/17/09 02:44 AM, Yhtomit wrote: I know I've seen such comparisons before, but they still get me.

We're frikken tiny!

Indeed we are. However, it was only very recently that the first extrasolar planet with a solid surface was found, and even then, it was basically lava as the planet (a surface temp of about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit) is about 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our Sun.

So while we may be extremely small compared to the rest of the Universe, we are beautifully and wonderous unique.

At 9/17/09 01:26 AM, GeneralAC wrote: Yeah, thats cool and all, But check out this advertisement that was on the page.
They are getting good at making ads, I almost clicked it!

Ah, all the females on those ads are just amazing....
If I saw this woman in real life I'd be in a trance

i actually prefer the size on the page

There is no need to be so anal about whats wrong and whats right though, even to Einstein this is still all a big mindfuck which keeps constantly changing.

Look up on youtube the biggest stars/planets the Earth is a molecule compared to the size of the biggest stars we found

At 9/17/09 02:56 AM, Saren wrote:

At 9/17/09 01:26 AM, GeneralAC wrote: Yeah, thats cool and all, But check out this advertisement that was on the page.
They are getting good at making ads, I almost clicked it!

Ah, all the females on those ads are just amazing....
If I saw this woman in real life I'd be in a trance

I find that their ads seem to be less and less about medieval MMORPG and more medieval Massively Made Titties.

We're also very slow. Doing over a hundred in your car may seem fast, but it is all relative. Think how fast the earth is going in it's orbit around the sun. Think of how fast our solar system is orbiting around the milky way galaxy. Think how fast the galaxy is moving through space.

At 9/17/09 02:48 AM, Presidentjlh wrote:

At 9/17/09 02:44 AM, Yhtomit wrote: I know I've seen such comparisons before, but they still get me.

We're frikken tiny!

Indeed we are. However, it was only very recently that the first extrasolar planet with a solid surface was found, and even then, it was basically lava as the planet (a surface temp of about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit) is about 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our Sun.

So while we may be extremely small compared to the rest of the Universe, we are beautifully and wonderous unique.

It sure seems that way now, but with the shear amount of other stars out there it almost an impossibility that there are no other planets with life.

some college (don't remember where now) ran a huge computer simmulation taking in to account all of the crucial factors for life as we know it. based on known stars in the milky way it came back that there were probably a few thousand civilizations in the milky way.

That is civilizations, not life forms, and that is in the milky way not the universe.

there are such an unimaginable amount of chances it is impossible that it hasn't happened over and over all around us

At 9/17/09 03:05 AM, Alamadu wrote: there are such an unimaginable amount of chances it is impossible that it hasn't happened over and over all around us

That is correct, but even in the scale of the Milky Way, we are still pretty unusual.

At 9/17/09 03:07 AM, Presidentjlh wrote:

At 9/17/09 03:05 AM, Alamadu wrote: there are such an unimaginable amount of chances it is impossible that it hasn't happened over and over all around us

That is correct, but even in the scale of the Milky Way, we are still pretty unusual.

very much so but if that computer simulation is even close it is still less than 1 in 1 billion chance which compared to the other numbers with cosmic sizes, is relatively common

I also checked and they actually said 361 was the number they came up with

link

the 1 in a billion chance is with the right numbers and it is a VERY conservative estimate

Let's not get subatomic, either.

Ohooo, so the universe is immense.... Who would've known?

Quality over Quantity, bro.

Well, the earth is big because it's all we've experienced, and being able to fly anywhere in the world in a day or less doesn't seem to make it feel any bigger.

But when compared to the rest of the universe it just shows how insignificant we humans really are.

It's not us that is small, it's everything else that is big. Plus it's good that earth is small because the smaller they are, the more stable.

I'd love to know we're not alone, but I don't think we'll ever find out. I think the laws , age and sheer unimaginable scale of the Universe make make it extremely difficult for two or more different intelligent life-forms to ever interact with each other.

At 9/17/09 03:02 AM, Presidentjlh wrote:

At 9/17/09 02:56 AM, Saren wrote:

At 9/17/09 01:26 AM, GeneralAC wrote: Yeah, thats cool and all, But check out this advertisement that was on the page.
They are getting good at making ads, I almost clicked it!

Ah, all the females on those ads are just amazing....
If I saw this woman in real life I'd be in a trance

I find that their ads seem to be less and less about medieval MMORPG and more medieval Massively Made Titties.

I seriously laughed out loud about that, I thought that was really funny. Good work sir, you win at life.