Our place in the vast scheme of things

Gain some perspective on our place in the vast scheme of things -

a quick slideshow-

"View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then

move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude

until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the

National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After

that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic

world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA

and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons."

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/

Eh ???

Originally posted by Lindseyw

Eh ???

Saw something similar to this on TV years ago, certainly makes you think.

Eh?

That's pretty nifty. There used to be an animated film that worked in a very similar way - it was shown on telly every now and then in the seventies, and I think a lot of people probably saw it at school.

I think it was called 'Cosmic Zoom' - it started right out in space then zoomed right down onto this boy sat in a boat, then continued zooming into his arm, where a mosquito was sitting. The zoom continued right into the molecular structure of the insect, then it ground to a halt and zoomed right out into the depths of space again.

In fact, there's yet another version of it here, which includes a bit more explanatory text:

http://aspire.cosmic-ray.org/labs/cosmic_zoom/

Originally posted by Damon

That's pretty nifty. There used to be an animated film that worked in a very similar way - it was shown on telly every now and then in the seventies, and I think a lot of people probably saw it at school.

That's the one

Cool ...

I used to think about this quite a bit .... scale !!

The universe being as infinitely big as it is infinitesimally small .. !?

hmmm. It's fine from the Milky way down to the DNA.

They have a nice continuous shot film of this at Techniquest in Cardiff.