That’s “awesome” in the proper sense — tending to induce awe and wonder. It’s called “The Scale of the Universe,” and it allows you to zoom in or out to view everything from quantum foam to the estimated size of the universe in scale. Behold the overwhelming mystery of creation, in convenient point-and-click format.
Some might be confused by the largest scale. In the standard model of cosmology, the universe is assumed to be homogeneous on large scales and thus–unless it has an interesting topology we don’t know about–infinite in extent. There is, however, a limit to the visible universe given by the particle horizon: the farthest distance that can even in principle be seen from Earth because the universe isn’t old enough for light from farther away to have gotten here yet. It’s roughly the size of that ball at the end.
Now, I am confused. The largest scale makes it seem as though the universe is finite in extent. Are they using some other set of assumptions rather than the standard model of cosmology?
Pretty cool, though.
The stuff outside that ball is the rest of the universe that’s too far away for us to see.
That was wonderful! Thank you for sharing this Proph. It really is awe-inspiring that people can look at this and not imagine a consciousness behind it, that this isn’t even credible, much less possible. Few things beat the sensation of looking into a clear sky in a secluded place at night and witnessing one’s unimportance in the face of such majesty. Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds.
You may want to warn your readers (who may well be listening to 16th century choral music on their computer) that this link, though awesome, has that most obnoxious of all Internet annoyances: automatic web page sound.