February 22, 2010

Scale of the Universe

I just found a really cool flash file online somewhere. I have no idea where it originally came from. It's 3.3 megabytes, so it's below the fold.


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Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 11:29 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 35 words, total size 1 kb.

1 I agree.  Cool.

Posted by: metaphysician at February 22, 2010 11:53 AM (DQ9zJ)

2 Very cool.  I'd seen one like this before, but it stopped around femtometers

Posted by: David at February 22, 2010 12:12 PM (rlE2m)

3 Very nice animation, it gives a pretty good impression of the size of the universe. I wonder how they can estimate the size of the universe outside of what we can observe.

Posted by: Jordi Vermeulen at February 22, 2010 02:39 PM (5EMw1)

4 A nifty updating of the classic Eames short, Powers of Ten.

And I very much like the music; I'd love to know what it is. It has just about the perfect feel for a video revealing wonders.

It reminds me a bit of Vangelis' music.

Posted by: refugee at February 22, 2010 02:58 PM (auErC)

5 Worth noting that there's about a dozen orders of magnitude at the bottom of the scale that are "empty", in the sense that there are no physical objects or phenomena, between neutrinos and the Planck Length.

I admit, though, that I can't imagine what that means, if anything.

Posted by: refugee at February 22, 2010 03:03 PM (auErC)

6 The universe operates at a very high resolution?

Posted by: metaphysician at February 22, 2010 03:12 PM (DQ9zJ)

7 If Relativity is to be believed, the universe is analog so resolution is infinite.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 22, 2010 03:31 PM (+rSRq)

8 But lengths shorter than the Planck Length are "meaningless". What does "resolution" mean under those circumstances?

Is this one of the places where Relativity and Quantum are just incompatible?

Posted by: refugee at February 22, 2010 03:44 PM (auErC)

9

Is this one of the places where Relativity and Quantum are just incompatible?

No, nothing like that.

If position is quantized, if there is some sort of grain to space-time, then it is theoretically possible to measure your movement relative to that grain, and the grain would intrinsically be a universal and absolute frame of reference. But relativity says there can be no such thing.

But lengths shorter than the Planck Length are "meaningless".

That doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means they don't matter.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 22, 2010 04:24 PM (+rSRq)

10 Well, if we want to quantise gravity, it would mean that there is a shortest possible length, and therefore that shorter lengths don't exist (I don't know if that length is the Plank length though).

Would be nice though, as it would mean we can unify all the fundamental forces into one theory (provided we unify the electroweak theory with the strong nuclear force first).

Posted by: Jordi Vermeulen at February 22, 2010 05:41 PM (5EMw1)

11

Nature didn't promise to please us. And the only working theory of gravity we have says that gravity isn't really a force.

Yeah, it would be neat if we could unify gravity with the other three forces, but I don't think it's going to happen.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 22, 2010 07:12 PM (+rSRq)

12 Am I the only one who's freaked out by the giant earthworm?

Posted by: ambulatorybird at February 22, 2010 09:01 PM (oyRye)

13 My grasp on this is intuitive and very vague, so please excuse me if I'm missing something obvious:
But lengths shorter than the Planck Length are "meaningless".That doesn't mean they don't exist; it just means they don't matter.If gravity can't be quantized, if position can't be quantized, isn't that another way of saying that relativity and quantum theory aren't compatible, in the sense that there is no underlying math from which both can be derived?

Also, if the grain-size is less than the Planck length, then you can't measure your position against it -- it fuzzes out. It would be like looking finely-ruled graph paper with a slightly blurred lens, so that the paper seems to be an even cyan.

Finally, the smallest physical object (a neutrino) is enormous compared to the grain size. It would be like trying to locate a human against a grid marked in gamma rays; you can't even identify the boundaries of a human body that accurately, we're too damn fuzzy. And the blurry lens means you can't see the lens anyway.

Even if there is a grain, the existence of the Planck Length means we can't ever see it, even in principle. As you say, it doesn't matter.

Again, I don't know enough to have a dog in the fight; I really don't understand what you're saying.

Posted by: refugee at February 22, 2010 09:06 PM (auErC)

14 Oh, and dag nab it, this silly science stuff has edged out the important question: Who wrote the music?

Posted by: refugee at February 22, 2010 09:07 PM (auErC)

15 Couldn't tell you. No clue. It's an MP3, but all tags have been stripped from it. And I have no idea where the SWF originally came from.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 22, 2010 09:13 PM (+rSRq)

16 "We're probably not in the center of the universe."

I thought current cosmological theory figured that the best approximation of the overall universe is a bubble, with everything on the surface?  Thus, there being no "center" at all.

Posted by: metaphysician at February 23, 2010 10:31 AM (DQ9zJ)

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