Saw this on CNET this morning. Developed by 14-yr old twins it's one of the coolest webpages I've come across recently. I thought you might enjoy it as well!
http://htwins.net/scale2/
http://htwins.net/scale2/
The Scale of the Universe 2
- Thread starter Johnny Vinyl
- Start date
Here's me trying to bring succor, comfort and solace to worried audiophiles, who fret over little picosecond variations in their digital audio playback, sufferers of the jitter-bug, if you will.
We measure jitter in picoseconds. If we use the picometer as a measure, and then actually mirror-image it (I'll get to the point shortly/longly), we get a better appreciation of the vast scale we are talking of.
It's really hard to picture how incredibly short a period a picosecond is, but if we translate it to distance relative to humans as the anchor measure for the small and the large, which is what this kid has done, then we might be helped by this image. What I've done is that I've moved into the solar system as far out as we need to go to find objects that approximate the size we're talking about - the kid is using supergiant stars.
To get that in perspective, here's our Sun (so small you can hardly see it, relative to Betelgeuse, which is a small gas giant compared to the others in the image used here.
So, how much should we worry about picosecond variations we can count on the fingers of two hands? Me, I'm pretty relaxed.
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We measure jitter in picoseconds. If we use the picometer as a measure, and then actually mirror-image it (I'll get to the point shortly/longly), we get a better appreciation of the vast scale we are talking of.
It's really hard to picture how incredibly short a period a picosecond is, but if we translate it to distance relative to humans as the anchor measure for the small and the large, which is what this kid has done, then we might be helped by this image. What I've done is that I've moved into the solar system as far out as we need to go to find objects that approximate the size we're talking about - the kid is using supergiant stars.
To get that in perspective, here's our Sun (so small you can hardly see it, relative to Betelgeuse, which is a small gas giant compared to the others in the image used here.
So, how much should we worry about picosecond variations we can count on the fingers of two hands? Me, I'm pretty relaxed.
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Very cool! I've seen something like it before, but it is impressive nonetheless. Reminds me of Douglas Adams' Total Perspective Vortex! "Didn't I tell you, man, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox!".
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