Sixty-two powers of ten, and we’re in the middle.
From the smallest length physics can talk about to the edge of what we can see spans about 10⁶² times. Humans sit near the middle of that range. Zoom through it, squeeze 13.8 billion years into a calendar, and meet the objects that break intuition.
Powers of ten
Each step of the slider multiplies the view by ten. Every circle is drawn to scale. Inspired by Charles and Ray Eames’s 1977 film Powers of Ten.
The cosmic calendar
Squeeze the universe’s 13.8 billion years into one calendar year, as Carl Sagan did in The Dragons of Eden (1977). The Big Bang is midnight on 1 January. Today is the last stroke of midnight on 31 December. Each day is about 38 million years; each second, about 440 years.
How small would you have to squeeze it?
Anything becomes a black hole if it’s compressed inside its Schwarzschild radius, r = 2GM/c². That radius grows in direct proportion to mass, about 3 km for every Sun’s worth.
Space is expanding, and there’s no centre
In 1929 Edwin Hubble found that distant galaxies recede faster the farther away they are. It isn’t an explosion from one spot: space itself stretches, so every galaxy sees all the others moving away. Tap any galaxy to stand on it.
The weirdest things out there
Real objects, observed or measured, that sound like science fiction.