1. Comment #18561 by Don'tForgetToBreathe on January 21, 2007 at 5:31 pm

To quote my fictional hero, Peter Griffin..."Freakin' sweet."

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2. Comment #18564 by EndlessForms on January 21, 2007 at 5:32 pm

Amazing!

Made me think of Carl Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot'.

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3. Comment #18565 by MaxieZ on January 21, 2007 at 5:42 pm

Check out this picture of Saturn

http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=2230

There is a small dot you can see in the rings...it's earth

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4. Comment #18570 by Milton on January 21, 2007 at 5:59 pm

There seems to be a zero missing on Arcturus.

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5. Comment #18571 by nine9s on January 21, 2007 at 6:00 pm

Did any of you guys see this?

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060315_dna_nebula.html

It's a nebula that got twisted into a DNA shape! Can you imagine the implications? That there is a certain combination of forces that just naturally spins matter into a DNA shape? Or am I jumping to conclusions? (Isn't RNA antecedent to DNA?)

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6. Comment #18574 by k1mgy on January 21, 2007 at 6:08 pm

Regarding #5 comment:

Hmmm. One would think, "god" and all, that the shape would be of a crescent moon, a cross, or a sitting buddha.

The intelligent designer missed His chance to send us a big clue.

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7. Comment #18576 by MaxieZ on January 21, 2007 at 6:18 pm

Klmgy: Perhaps God is really Led Zepplin and those are all just stairways to heaven

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8. Comment #18588 by Miniac on January 21, 2007 at 9:20 pm

As the Earth and then the Sun shrunk away it made me think of Douglas Adams and the total perspective vortex that shows people they are just an insignificant dot on an insignificant dot.
Also I know Pluto got demoted but why did they boot Uranus?

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9. Comment #18591 by M31 on January 21, 2007 at 10:08 pm

This is such a nice demonstration, I'm always expecting it to end at Betelgeuse, but it keeps going on!

It is kind of sad that Uranus gets overlooked so much nowadays just because its somewhat unfortunate name makes it the butt of so many jokes. I guess for this demo they figure that Uranus and Neptune are almost the same size so it doesn't add much to include it. In the exo-planet field people always talk about looking for Neptunes or "Hot Neptunes" around other stars, but never a Hot Uranus Search, for obvious reasons I suppose.

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10. Comment #18595 by Wonko the Sane on January 22, 2007 at 12:06 am

I have had this up on my Myspace page for a while. Awesome in the true sense of the word. However, the version that has the theme from 2001 playing is much better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atkTncQ32C8&eurl=

LOL M31, "Hot Uranus"

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11. Comment #18598 by Sam on January 22, 2007 at 12:52 am

...and this is where it gets big...

Typical galaxies contain ten million to one trillion (107 to 1012) stars [...] There are probably more than a hundred billion (1011) galaxies in the observable universe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy

Just think how ridiculous this makes the whole idea that the creator of the universe should be obsessed with the beliefs and sexual practices of one particular species of carbon-based life-forms on a single grain of sand in the Sahara desert of the universe.

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12. Comment #18601 by aleprechaunist on January 22, 2007 at 1:53 am

I guess you can't be too hard on Gawd for letting the odd tsunami slip by, then..

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13. Comment #18625 by SMART on January 22, 2007 at 5:33 am

THIS is what is needed to be seen in all the uncivilised world. We need to build science centres and planetariums in places like the Middle East. Let people, particularly young people, get a true appreciation of just how small and insignificant our planetary speck of dust is in the universe.

The more you understand the size of the universe the less likely you are to think that its alleged creator requires you to live your life following a set of ridiculous rules as dictated by a religion!

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14. Comment #18639 by Riley on January 22, 2007 at 7:09 am

For most of my life, my mental picture for the scale and size of the planets and our solar system was based on pictures in text books and mechanical models in science museums.

It was only just about 5 years ago that I realized (by trying to draw a scale model for myself of the sun and the earth) how far off I was ... and the awe it triggered in me was a religious experience of the first order. It was the outrageously large distance between the sun and the earth, relative to the size of the earth that really grabbed me.

Really great to be re-reminded of these things.

This is a bit of revelation again for me, I hadn't realized that the sun was so small relative to some of the other common stars.

This stuff is great! I love it!


---

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15. Comment #18640 by HumanisticJones on January 22, 2007 at 7:20 am

I actually recieved an email from my family (seemingly incurably religious and prone to applying it to everything) that contained similar pictures to this video. It wasn't screen shots from this, but similarly scaled pictures of the planets and stars. Their immediate mindset was to apply God to it and claim that this was all the proof anyone needed that the Christian god could do all things.

I feel my lovely partner was more astute when she saw the first bit of the email and proclaimed, "If there was ever anything that would blow religion out of the water, its this."

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16. Comment #18651 by scottishgeologist on January 22, 2007 at 8:03 am

SMART said: We need to build science centres and planetariums in places like the Middle East

Great idea, after all, a lot of the stars have Arabic names - just think how many begin with "Al-" These Midddle Eastern people were great sky gazers in their time.

Favourite star name? Has to be Zubenelgenubi....

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17. Comment #18682 by Friend Giskard on January 22, 2007 at 11:26 am

Here's a similar kind of thing which I actually prefer:

http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm

Although those red giants are impressive in girth, you should bear in mind that they contain less matter per cubic meter than what in most laboratories would be called a vacuum.

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18. Comment #18697 by john_eg on January 22, 2007 at 1:58 pm

Ah, if you click and drag the pointer you can really get a good view.

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19. Comment #18701 by Dogbreath on January 22, 2007 at 2:08 pm

So, God created lots of different sized objects, some of which were very hot, but established the constants that would create life on just one of those objects? That sounds pretty compelling to me!!

This might be a sily question, but why did he make them all spherical? You would have thought he'd use more imagination.

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20. Comment #18734 by Duff on January 22, 2007 at 5:06 pm

Shame on you, Dogbreath. Everyone knows God does not deal in squares, triangles, ovals or any other silly shapes. He only deals in spheres. Get over it!

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21. Comment #18941 by HappyPrimate on January 23, 2007 at 8:59 pm

Oh the beautiful and scary cosmos. Getting your brain around the vastness of our solar system, not to mention our own galaxy and then all the other galaxies. Its a really BIG thing this universe. We humans and our little wet rock are sooooooooo small. When our star and planet are gone, will life elsewhere miss us? I think not.

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22. Comment #19008 by uzi on January 24, 2007 at 10:05 am

One thing that continues to amaze me is the energy emitted by our sun. 93 million miles away, sending its energy through cold space and yet it still can burn us. Yet, most heat sources on Earth cannot be felt even a few feet away.

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23. Comment #19133 by chbg21808 on January 25, 2007 at 5:24 am

Wow... This video is silent and doesn't need words. The gravitational pull of these giants must be astronomical... Although isn't gravity related to density? ...any science brains please.

Gives a whole new meaning to "Pale Blue Dot".

How insignificant and mind shrinkingly pathetic is the God myth, compared to the Wonders of the Universe.

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24. Comment #19444 by NotWithoutMyMonkey on January 27, 2007 at 8:34 am

I'ts absolutely mindboggling trying to comprehend the relative sizes of these celestial bodies. Now trying to comprehend the distances between them (as opposed to them lined up in a row as in the demonstration) is truly mind-blowing.

I feel deeply humbly and privileged to be an infitessimally tiny part of this majectic (natural) cosmos. Videos like this should be compulsory viewing for our children - what better way to foster a broader perspective and an awareness of our precious life and this planet is.

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25. Comment #35921 by simplemind on April 29, 2007 at 10:26 am

its all so beutifull and yet we are still here fighting amongst our self, just think how much we could have explored by now if we really had the mind to?
Think of all the billions spent on war,the repessed state of mind religeon breeds.
We are my freinds living in a state of arrested development.

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