This Interactive Visualization Of 'The Size Of Space' Will Blow Your Dang Mind
*BRAIN MELTS*
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The sun at the center of our solar system is, for our human brains, incomprehensibly huge. Approximately 1.3 million Earths could fit inside it. But on the galactic and universal scale, our sun — a "yellow dwarf star" — is a shrimp, an infinitesimal speck lost among the hypergiant stars and the nebulae.

You've likely seen visualizations showing the relative size of cosmic objects before, but for our money, Neal Agarwal's "The Size of Space" is one of the most convincing — in the sense that it has left us the most gobsmacked.


The setup of the site encourages this. With the left and right arrow keys, you can scroll through objects found in space from smallest to largest, allowing you to jump back and forth to wrap your head around the fact that that no, that's no the sun you see on the far left when you're looking at the Pistol Star — because our tiny sun has already disappeared from view:


If your brain can't handle it, just button mash your way to the end and relax with this view of the observable universe — you're in there, somewhere:


[Neal Agarwal via Kottke]

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