Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.
— Douglas Adams
After yesterday’s Connections class on Psalm 19:1, I got lots of people asking for the link to the web site that let you zoom in and out on the universe… so as promised, here it is:
Note: when you load the page, it has a “visit our sponsor” advertisement while the animation loads. When it’s done loading, click the “Play” link at the bottom of the screen.
For those of you who weren’t there, you can zoom it all the way out to see the entire universe, or all the way in to see the tiniest subatomic particles. It’s amazing how God’s creation takes your breath away whether you look up or down — it seems that man has been placed right in the middle to be awestruck in both directions.
In the seventeenth century, Pascal considered man’s place in this sweeping scale and wrote:
For who will not marvel that our body, a moment ago imperceptible in a universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, should now be a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, compared to the nothingness beyond our reach? Anyone who considers himself in this way will be terrified at himself, and, seeing his mass, as given him by nature, supporting him between these two abysses of infinity and nothingness, will tremble at these marvels. I believe that with his curiosity changing into wonder he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than investigate them with presumption.
— Pascal, Pensée #199
Love the Scale of the Universe model! 🙂
That’s very cool. I love how they provide pronunciation help for Uranus. 🙂
Cant you divide Plank’s Length in 2 and get a little smaller? Makes sense to me.
I’m no physicist, but I think I can take a shot at that…
Sure, simple arithmetic lets you divide the number that represents Planck’s Length in half, thirds, millions, whatever. The problem is that those numbers don’t describe a meaningful size when you start talking about physical phenomena.
Another way to think of Planck’s Length is “the smallest measurement we could ever hope to make.” The reason for this is that the fundamental units of physics just don’t let you resolve anything smaller than that.
For example, the smallest measurement you can make with a calendar is a day, because that’s the smallest unit of time the calendar gives you. In the same way, the smallest unit of size that physics gives us is the Planck Length.
Just goes to show… In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.
I heard someone say once if you start on a journey and stop half way and then start again and stop half way from that point and keep traveling that way, you’ll never reach your destination because every distance can be halved, no matter how small it is.
Susan and I “discussed” that for a long time one day (with me taking the ‘yes, that’s true’ position). She finally said, ok but at some point you’ll be so close that an additional half way journey will be as good as there. In other words, the distance is so small at some point that in practice you’re there even though theory says you aren’t.
See also Zeno’s Paradoxes.
I showed the younger kids this after reading to them this morning in Isaiah (45:12) how God stretched out the Heavens. Very neat illustration.