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If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel (2014)

257 points| _Microft | 4 years ago |joshworth.com | reply

69 comments

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[+] dang|4 years ago|reply
Many previous submissions, but the meaningful threads appear to be:

If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21735528 - Dec 2019 (82 comments)

If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13790954 - March 2017 (81 comments)

If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13217129 - Dec 2016 (11 comments)

If the Moon Was Only 1 Pixel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12038584 - July 2016 (4 comments)

If the moon were only 1 pixel: a scale model of the solar system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7551423 - April 2014 (17 comments)

If The Moon Was Only 1 Pixel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341690 - March 2014 (178 comments)

[+] ammar_x|4 years ago|reply
This website is a great example for me of useful, interesting, and original things that can be done on the Internet, instead of the abundant nonsense. Hope there was list of these websites.
[+] tabtab|4 years ago|reply
I don't know, the UI seems screwed up to me. They should have scrolled vertically, for one. It's more natural to people and mice design.
[+] ant6n|4 years ago|reply
I hope there was a search engine.
[+] krilnon|4 years ago|reply
Glad to see this showing up every few years. After its initial launch, I think I helped the creator add the localization and lightspeed features: https://joshworth.com/updates-to-the-solar-system-map/

...and we eventually met up and had lunch.

[+] fouc|4 years ago|reply
I noticed the new light speed feature.. Shockingly slow compared to scrolling, really drives it home.
[+] _Microft|4 years ago|reply
This one is really driving home the scale of the solar system. Another amazing visualization of distances is the video "Powers of Ten" that goes to the largest and smallest distances. It was filmed in 1977 already but that only adds to its charme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

[+] wruza|4 years ago|reply
c is relatively slow

Only from our point of view. Photons have zero travel time from their perspective (thanks to Einstein). When you go with different speeds, approaching c, you see different distances (and things), and with just 1g acceleration, the same that pulls you down right now, you can go to the stars, galaxies and… well, just watch yourself:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=b_TkFhj9mgk (30min)

[+] blowski|4 years ago|reply
Discussed this with my non-programmer, slightly claustrophobic wife. Thinking about the vastness of space terrifies her, and she feels the same about the vastness of the internet and software. I'd never thought of a codebase as occupying that same kind of physical vastness before.
[+] Tepix|4 years ago|reply
Wouldn't the vastness of space soothe someone who is claustrophic?
[+] amake|4 years ago|reply
If you like to scroll vertically instead of horizontally, you might like this one that takes you to the bottom of the ocean:

https://neal.fun/deep-sea/

[+] alphabet9000|4 years ago|reply
I remember seeing this page back in the day and always thought it was really funny how it describes itself as being 'A tediously accurate scale model of the solar system' - you scroll over a bit and it points to "1 Pixel" for scale - but the "pixel" it points to is actually two pixels [0].

[0] https://i.jollo.org/MZosAzpl.png

[+] supurbly|4 years ago|reply
That could just be your client trying to handle a pixel-sized thing that isn't exactly aligned to your display's pixel grid.
[+] js8|4 years ago|reply
If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you will indeed see Uranus.
[+] Nohortax|4 years ago|reply
I'd like to knock up a solar system in a right scale and I wondered how can I do that. Now that I see this article I think I just can't, not in a regular room at least. I guess I will not have my solar system in an accurate scale hung on my ceiling. Too bad
[+] overlordalex|4 years ago|reply
You can always look at the size dimension instead - you can relatively easily have the planets to scale next to each other (As long as you exclude the sun, of course).

Ever since I found out that the planets would fit neatly into the gap between the Earth and the Moon I've been toying with it as a tattoo idea

[+] _Microft|4 years ago|reply
It helps that Pluto is no longer a planet but not much.

Uranus is 4.5 billion km from Sun and if, for the sake of simplicity, the model is 4.5m wide, that would mean that Earth with its diameter of ~13000km would be a speck just 0.013mm wide. That should be 1/10th of a single dot at a resolution of 200dpi if you are planning to print a map (one dot at 2000dpi but good luck printing that;). You might want to consider adding an arrow and a label.

[+] zamadatix|4 years ago|reply
It's a fun thing for a walking/biking trail near you if you can get park permission though!
[+] isolli|4 years ago|reply
It reminds me of this quote from Feynman [0]:

"The next question was — what makes planets go around the sun? At the time of Kepler some people answered this problem by saying that there were angels behind them beating their wings and pushing the planets around an orbit. As you will see, the answer is not very far from the truth. The only difference is that the angels sit in a different direction and their wings push inward."

It's easy to take a lot of things for granted, but it's amazing that gravity pulls from such a phenomenal distance.

[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

[+] keithnz|4 years ago|reply
It's a good thing as we get more high res monitors the solar system is going to shrink. This would have been much much worse back on my Atari800xl
[+] mark-r|4 years ago|reply
"Tedious" is right. Must have been designed for a phone, because on my desktop I gave up scrolling before I got to the first planet.
[+] phaemon|4 years ago|reply
You can hold down the right-arrow key to scroll, and you reach Mercury in 12 seconds.
[+] industriousthou|4 years ago|reply
I clicked on the scroll bar to zoom through. Still pretty tedious, but I got the end.
[+] fouc|4 years ago|reply
side scrolling is really fast with a trackpad
[+] blakewatson|4 years ago|reply
I was just looking at this site earlier today independently of HN. I revisit it several times a year, mainly because I can’t get enough "scale of the universe" comparisons (if you know any good ones, please send them my way).

I especially love the light speed auto-scroll because it does a great job of visualizing just how slow the speed of light is (or how vast space is).

[+] teddyh|4 years ago|reply
> 1 pixel → ·‭ = 3474.8 km ← The diameter of the moon

This seems wrong to me. Would not using area instead of diameter (squaring the circle, as it were) yield a more correct-looking result? As in, the area of one pixel should equal the apparent two-dimensional area of the moon.

[+] k_|4 years ago|reply
Seems fine to me given the main objective here is to show distances, not size of things.
[+] shawabawa3|4 years ago|reply
does it matter when everything displayed is very closely approximated by a circle?
[+] grlass|4 years ago|reply
One of the most compelling short VR experiences I've tried is Titans of Space PLUS, which gives a tour around the solar system, and then compares our sun to other stars.

The sense of scale when you have depth and head movement had me quaking at a few moments.

[+] thangalin|4 years ago|reply
Here's my 3D render of a solar system grand tour that uses time to show the enormity of distances:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM0JMaM_tdQ

[+] dundarious|4 years ago|reply
Thanks. I love almost any use of Michael Nyman's music, and feel compelled to recommend watching Peter Greenaway's film "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover," where a different arrangement and orchestra plays the same piece for a pivotal scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WSFVdQQwhc