Scale of the universe sites, videos and apps

[Second Time Around]

I've just introduced a friend's 13 year old daughter to astronomy.  She's had her Xmas present (a 130mm Dob) early to look at the conjunction.

She says she's having difficulty fully grasping the sheer scale of the solar system and the universe.

Any recommendations for websites, videos or apps that'll help with this please?

Thanks.

Edited December 20, 2020 by Second Time Around

[PEMS]

I would doubt it exept as a factual definition or representation. It is more how a persons mind interprets things.

To me the universe is big, and where we sit in it, physically, is just about impossible to explain with any degree of physical measurement. But as said to me it is in many ways just big. OK call it Infinite but so what, that is just an extreme big.

In some ways someone trying to make her understand their idea of infinite and big and whatever is not a good idea. We all understand things a little differently. I have seen assorted videos or simulations of something panning out from earth, through the solar system, passing nearby stars and then the milky way and whichever cluster we are part of and carrying on out. And all leave me thinking "OK, So what?" Maybe I am not impressed by Infinity, would seem so.

Brian Cox did one program where the sun was central and on some scale the planets were at R1, R2 R3 etc using some marker in a US city. It just seemed meaningless: Saturn would be the other side of the bay by that lighthouse. Was some comment ot other. Pointless to me.

Suggest some reasonable books on the solar system, then maybe the nearby stars but use lightyears as it is both time and distance, then perhaps the Milky way. Let her get her own understanding.

[kirkster501]

http://sciencenetlinks.com/tools/scale-universe-2/

[vlaiv]

This one is quite interesting:

https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

This is also nice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoW8Tf7hTGA

It turns out that youtube starts pumping them out dime a dozen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Kgf9dCgME

Then there is this image (warning - large file 46mb):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Location_of_Earth_(9x1-English_Annot).jpg

[vlaiv]

7 minutes ago, kirkster501 said:

http://sciencenetlinks.com/tools/scale-universe-2/

This is brilliant - never occurred to me that one could run a marathon along the equator of neutron star

 

[Floater]

Not sure if this will help at all but since the concept of infinity was raised earlier above it is, perhaps, relevant. And anyhow I like relating it.

A popular and celebrated US physicist, Michio Kaku, says that to a mathematician ‘infinity’ just means a very big number; to a physicist it is an abomination!

Get your head round that! 😳

[Moonshed]

My favourite for showing the scale of the universe is a YouTube video.

it works really well in conveying a sense of the vastness of the cosmos. I give it 9/10. I would give it ten but nothing’s perfect!

Edited December 20, 2020 by Moonshed

[Moonshed]

It’s interesting to note that on a logarithmic scale us humans are halfway, a cat’s whisker either side, between the smallest sub-atomic particle and the vastness of the universe. One can only wonder about such a coincidence. 

[maw lod qan]

I cant possibly image how to describe the scale and vastness of the universe to a young mind of 13, when at 65 it still boggles mine!

You could explain how we use light to measure distances, but even that leaves you scratching your head, totally amazed.

When I try to explain it to friends, I just say what we can see is bigger than our imaginations, and that right now is just the beginning.

[vlaiv]

20 hours ago, Floater said:

Not sure if this will help at all but since the concept of infinity was raised earlier above it is, perhaps, relevant. And anyhow I like relating it.

A popular and celebrated US physicist, Michio Kaku, says that to a mathematician ‘infinity’ just means a very big number; to a physicist it is an abomination!

Get your head round that! 😳

I don't have much problems understanding concept of infinity, and yes, it is just a very big number - one that every other number is smaller of

However in terms of size of universe - one should not think infinity. We live in very finite universe - as we currently understand it. We all live inside a horizon and for all intents and purposes, everything inside that horizon is reality - causally connected to us and everything "outside" that horizon is not in any way connected to us - it can't influence us in any way, it can't be seen since light from it will never reach us, nor any force from that region will ever reach us. Question is then - how can we test if it really exists? Answer is - for all intents and purposes - it does not exist. It exists no more than field of pink daisies with giant orange marshmellow half elephant - half rinos dancing around on it. We can prove neither.

 

[Moonshed]

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

I don't have much problems understanding concept of infinity, and yes, it is just a very big number - one that every other number is smaller of

vlaiv, I find that I always tend to agree with your comments, but on this occasion I have to say, with all due humility, you are wrong. Infinity, although a mathematical symbol, is only a concept, not a number. It is no more a number than happy, sad or banana, it’s a word. Depending on use infinite is either an adjective or a noun.

 

[Zermelo]

This one: https://www.eamesoffice.com/the-work/powers-of-ten/

I have the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Charles-Ray-Eames-Powers-Flipbook/dp/0716734419/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3QQHX623B6UT8&dchild=1&keywords=powers+of+ten&qid=1608561190&sprefix=powers+of+ten%2Caps%2C100&sr=8-1

(currently out of stock)

The thing that struck me most when I saw it was the huge step up when you go from the solar system to the next star, compared with the much lesser step when you go from our milky way to nearby galaxies.

[John]

I did an outreach session at a school last year. We did some solar viewing in h-alpha and also tried an exercise with the children to try and demonstrate the scale of the solar system. Not a video or an app but something practical.

We used a basketball to represent the Sun and a small bead to represent the Earth which were about the right relative sizes. We asked the children to think how far the Earth / bead might be from the Sun / Basketball on the same scale and they had some guesses by running off around the playground in small groups with beads (dropping their Earths a few times I might add - just as well that we had some spares !). We then positioned it at about the correct distance (about 20 metres away I think ?). We then produced a golf ball to act as Jupiter and they went running off again trying to work out where it would be relative to the Sun and Earth. The answer was somewhat further off than they expected - it was towards the edge of the school playing fields I seem to recall - a bit over 100 metres away. And finally we produced a cricket ball to represent the nearest star - Proxima Centauri and asked for guesses where that would need to be placed. The children knew that the nearest star would be a lot further away so came up with suggestions of nearby towns or even Scotland in one case. The answer did rather surprise them as it did us when we worked it out - the cricket ball would need to be in the middle of Africa to be on a similar scale and we would all need to get on an airplane to take it there !

Now the exact sizes of our representative objects might only be approximately right and similarly with the distances that we reckoned that they needed to be placed but the overall but I think that the whole exercise did at least start to illustrate the sort of scales that we are considering in astronomy. And, most importantly, it kept 8 and 9 year olds interested and active for the 30 minutes or so that it took to complete the exercise. We really enjoyed it as well 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2020 by John

[vlaiv]

15 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

The thing that struck me most when I saw it was the huge step up when you go from the solar system to the next star, compared with the much lesser step when you go from our milky way to nearby galaxies.

Indeed, once you cross to galactic scale - things get "normal" again

John above wrote very interesting account on how stars are vast distances away from each other. Here is one of galactic scales.

Milky way and Andromeda represented by hands.

Take 20000Ly to be 1cm. Andromeda is 11000Ly so it will be around two inches. Take your left arm and make about two inches of distance between your index finger and your thumb. Milky way is around 53000Ly so it will be something like an inch - take your right arm and again space your index finger and thumb about an inch. Now spread your hands about 1.2meters (or rather just separate them as much as you can without fully extending them).

This is Milky way and Andromeda system to scale. If you do that - edge of observable universe is about 4 miles away from you (13.8 Bly as the light travels) or about 14 miles away from you (46 Bly in comoving coordinates - if you had ruler long enough to extend the whole distance).  Difference is of course due to universe expanding - on is "travel" distance (at the speed of light - or rather how much light traveled since it started) and other is physical length.

Once you start thinking in galactic scales - observable universe is not that large at all - just a dozen or so miles away from you at most

[Moonshed]

26 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

The thing that struck me most when I saw it was the huge step up when you go from the solar system to the next star, compared with the much lesser step when you go from our milky way to nearby galaxies.

That’s odd because I see it as the opposite. The nearest star is only a little over 4 light years away whereas the nearest spiral galaxy is of course Andromeda at 2 million light years. Maybe you are referring to the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, but that is actually a part of the Milky Way.

[Tiny Clanger]

7 minutes ago, John said:

I did an outreach session at a school last year. We did some solar viewing in h-alpha and also tried an exercise with the children to try and demonstrate the scale of the solar system. Not a video or an app but something practical.

We used a basketball to represent the Sun and a small bead to represent the Earth which were about the right relative sizes. We asked the children to think how far the Earth / bead might be from the Sun / Basketball on the same scale and they had some guesses by running off around the playground in small groups with beads (dropping their Earths a few times I might add - just as well that we had some spares !). We then positioned it at about the correct distance (about 20 metres away I think ?). We then produced a golf ball to act as Jupiter and they went running off again trying to work out where it would be relative to the Sun and Earth. The answer was somewhat further off than they expected - it was towards the edge of the school playing fields I seem to recall - a bit over 100 metres away. And finally we produced a cricket ball to represent the nearest star - Proxima Centauri and asked for guesses where that would need to be placed. The children knew that the nearest star would be a lot further away so came up with suggestions of nearby towns or even Scotland in one case. The answer did rather surprise them as it did us when we worked it out - the cricket ball would need to be in the middle of Africa to be on a similar scale and we would all need to get on an airplane to take it there !

Now the exact sizes of our representative objects might only be approximately right and similarly with the distances that we reckoned that they needed to be placed but the overall but I think that the whole exercise did at least start to illustrate the sort of scales that we are considering in astronomy. And, most importantly, it kept 8 and 9 year olds interested and active for the 30 minutes or so that it took to complete the exercise. We really enjoyed it as well 

 

 

I regularly did a similar exercise with my classes (anything between 7 to 11 year olds) and worked out the distances for solar system objects based on a 1 metre diameter Sun ( most classrooms have a metre stick or two handy ) imagined in the corner of the classroom . I found locations the pupils would be familiar with at roughly the correct distances for the inner objects  (Mercury in the playground, Earth by a specific park, Mars at a shopping centre etc)  , and once their minds were suitably boggled with the distances as far as the solar system goes, as an encore, I'd ask them to imagine we shrink the the scale to make the Sun down to the size of a football, and say we need someone to get on a 'plane to Mumbai with this nearest star ...

I reckoned that was sufficiently distant a celestial object to end on, the pupils who were interested were wowed , we didn't need to push further out !

[Zermelo]

10 minutes ago, Moonshed said:

That’s odd because I see it as the opposite. The nearest star is only a little over 4 light years away whereas the nearest spiral galaxy is of course Andromeda at 2 million light years. Maybe you are referring to the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, but that is actually a part of the Milky Way.

I was thinking in terms of the steps in the video.
Our solar system is encompassed at the step labelled 10^13 m
Then there's bascially nothing until you get to the 10^18m frame - five powers of ten.
The milky way is framed at 10^21m, but nearby galaxies appear in the (next) 10^22m frame.

[Second Time Around]

Thanks, everyone.  Please keep them coming.

[Moonshed]

14 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

I was thinking in terms of the steps in the video.
Our solar system is encompassed at the step labelled 10^13 m
Then there's bascially nothing until you get to the 10^18m frame - five powers of ten.
The milky way is framed at 10^21m, but nearby galaxies appear in the (next) 10^22m frame.

Yes, I see what you mean regarding the video, the way the distances are shown is hard to understand.