0482: "Height"

[ungeniusman]

The "heaping bowl of salt" thing bothers the crap out of me. It's a crappy reference, doesn't make sense in that context, and isn't even quoted correctly. Shape up, Randall.

[Synthuir]

I don't get it, how would the Eiffel Tower look on a vertical log plot, then? Just 1 line straight up...?

[Celtic Minstrel]

What does it say just below Arcturus?

"Missing WMDs"

What on earth is Bupkis?

A slang term for "nothing". (Apparently from a Yiddish word meaning "goat droppings". The more you know.)

What are those two things between the Moon and the Sun?

On the left: the Planet Express delivery ship, from Futurama.
On the right: Discovery One, from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Thanks. That now makes me wonder what WMD's are, but that I can probably look up on Wikipedia...

Where's the CN Tower?

It's just off the edge of the drawing.

Is Sir perhaps unaware of the Entity Known As Google? Allow me to take the liberty: http://www.google.com/search?q=bupkis.

See that first result there? Surely this would be quicker and easier than asking such questions of your (presumably) fellow humans?

It would be, if I really considered it something that I absolutely had to know.

Add this to the "List of Things Randall Didn't Include"

I'd be remiss if I didn't put in a plug for Rukbat.

Rukbat is Alpha Saggitarius. Which, admittedly, does not appear to be on there.

The Eris reference made me love Randall just a bit more than I already did. I don't know anyone else who'd even heard of Discordianism... and hitchhiker's guide references always make me laugh.

I've heard of Discordianism – I discovered it on Wikipedia one day.

One of my questions remains unanswered:

What's that thing just below the left edge of One Billion Light Years?

[DragonHawk]

Add this to the "List of Things Randall Didn't Include"

I'd be remiss if I didn't put in a plug for Rukbat.

Rukbat is Alpha Saggitarius. Which, admittedly, does not appear to be on there.

That was kinda my point.

One of my questions remains unanswered:

What's that thing just below the left edge of One Billion Light Years?

Whatever it is, there's another one across to the right on the other side, up slightly. Some galaxies have been observed to be spewing stuff (matter? energy? both? I forget) out of their centers, on a path perpendicular to the their galactic discs. That's my guess as to what those are.

[Celtic Minstrel]

there's another one

Yeah, I just chose the one whose position was easier to describe.

[Kain]

Thanks. That now makes me wonder what WMD's are, but that I can probably look up on Wikipedia...

One of my questions remains unanswered:

What's that thing just below the left edge of One Billion Light Years?

Well, this is just a guess, back given the distance listed, I would assume those are quasars. Check wikipedia for more info.

By the way, the missing WMDs was a reference to the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussien supposedly had before we invaded (our initial reason for the war).

[muzzle]

I think the original idea comes from this paper:
http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~mjuric/universe/

Advice: do not open the link to the gif image, it was not compressed and it's 12Mb large. Here is an identical, losslessly compressed, image:
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/8670/all200bav5.gif

Cheers,

Emme

PS
I scanned quickly trough the discussion and I do not think anyone mentioned this article yet. Sorry if I skipped something, it's a 7 pages thread after all.

[Shay Guy]

Am I the only one who wants to see Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann fit in somewhere at the top?

[lassefolkersen]

This (and depth) is such a brilliant idea that I have started using in lectures for visualization of vastly different scale.

I've made a small python script that can "logaritmify" stuff:
http://www.folkersen.com/files/logaritmifier.py
While it's not exactly point-and-click GUI, you can use it if you have Python and Python Imaging Library installed.
Just write "python logaritmifier.py [name_of_picture.jpg]" -- it'll do the calculations and logaritmify the picture (be sure to make a copy first, unless you want to be forever logaritmic).

Optionally you can specify a "horizontal expansion" variable "python logaritmifier.py [name_of_picture.jpg] [number]"
While that will depart from the strict mathematical "everything is accurate on a vertical logaritmic scale", it does makes for a more lifelike logaritmification.

Example of use in this visualization of the different scales of DNA microarrays:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98237982@N ... /?edited=1
or

This is so nice to use for explanation (individual DNA strings in the bottom, probes a little higher, point out some probeset a little higher - and, yes, that's me on the top, logaritmified!)

[lassefolkersen]

Oh, by the way. Here's my take on the eiffel tower discussion, using the above mentioned logaritmifier script:


Found the original on flickr, so I should attribute to "carlos_seo" under a cc-license.

[George2.0]

Hey, check this out:
http://web.mit.edu/cmerrill/Public/
Mural of this comic.

[freddyk]

i think it would have been funny if there was an arrow that pointed to the black hat guy that said Schrödinger, so that would make the cat...

[Archosaur]

Dudes, I rasterbated all over this comic.
It's all over my bedroom wall.
Seriously, I showed my girlfriend and she was like "whoa! I could never do that! Your arms must be exhausted!"
I was like "Yea, it's all about the wrist."
She's all like "Really?"
and I'm like "Yea, think about how many repetitions of the same motion you have to make."
She's like "Yea, I guess so. So, how long can you keep it up?"

I was like, "well, I'm moving out in June, so I guess I'll take it down then."

What? What did you think I was talking about?

[chumbawamba]

Trekkie here. I just check the Star Trek Encyclopedia and the edge of Federation Sector 001 is actually only 10 light years from the Sol system, so it should be just past Sirius and way before Pollux and Arcturus.

[lordlicorice]

I can't believe nobody got the Snoop Dogg reference.. at least, the topic search doesn't turn anything up, and I think this is the reference.

The Snoop Dogg bust made by the unfortunately-named Busts-R-Us plays a somewhat prominent role in Problem Sleuth. Somewhere during their adventure it's lost in high orbit between worlds. It occasionally interacts with the characters to bump something or act as a projectile. After it acquires Candy Mecha legs it becomes Captain Snoop Dogg. Here's one image featuring it: http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=001124

[Werewolf]

And thus, I have a new avatar.

Ooh! And there should be a black hole full of lost socks. If the WMD's are out there, then so are all those dang socks.

Odd socks don't end up in space; they crawl into wardrobes and, after a short pupal stage, emerge as fully-formed wire coat-hangers.

Actually, they are eaten by the Eater of Socks which is a sort of anteater shaped creature (so to better suck up the sock) and lives in the laundry room.

I thought I was the only one in the universe who had read/seen "The Hogfather". Yay!

I hate being corrected for my wording, as I do it so often to everybody else.

[phlip]

I thought I was the only one in the universe who had seen "The Hogfather". Yay!

"Seen"?

I mean, sure, the movie version was alright, but still... you default to "seen"?

[Werewolf]

I thought I was the only one in the universe who had seen "The Hogfather". Yay!

"Seen"?

I mean, sure, the movie version was alright, but still... you default to "seen"?

Read. Whatever.

It like saying you've seen the Harry Potter series. It doesn't imply you've never read the book. Actually it sort of does. I stand corrected. Wherever. Suffice to say I've read and seen this and a couple of his other diskworld novels.

[iceberg]

I fail at using the logaritmifier...

[morganw]

The handwritten white text on black background reminded me of my favorite science book when I was a kid, The Gunter Papers by Jack Gunter, a junior high school teacher in Massachusetts in the 60's. It's been out of print for years, but used copies are usually available on Amazon. Here's a taste:

[charden_sama]

Was the word "Life" pointing to a moon of Jupiter a Callisto reference?

[Pfhorrest]

Was the word "Life" pointing to a moon of Jupiter a Callisto reference?

Nah, probably Europa.

Or possibly Eurmomma.

[eric_svrei]

Yes, poster. I was going to log on just to say this must be made available as one, but I thankfully see I am not the only one

The walls of my dorm room tingle with longing..

Or, if not a door poster, one of those very long t-shirts for wearing at the beach.
I really love this one, the mixture of the inside jokes (no, I don't get all of them), the real science, the logarithmic scale which makes this possible,and most of all, the star trek reference.

[scott487]

If, by a measure of the cosmic background radiation, we've determined that the edge of the observable universe is 13.75 billion light years away - that the age of the universe is roughly 14 billion years - how did the top of the "Height" in this poster get to be 47 Billion light years up? We can only see 13.75 billion light years up.

I'm confused and Wikipedia isn't helping this time.

[phlip]

We can only see 13.75 billion light years up.

We can only see light that has travelled 13.75 billion years to get here... because of the universe is expanding, when you're measuring such long distances, that doesn't mean that the thing is 13.75 billion light years away. See Wikipedia - the observable universe is about 46 billion light years in radius.

[scott487]

We can only see 13.75 billion light years up.

We can only see light that has travelled 13.75 billion years to get here... because of the universe is expanding, when you're measuring such long distances, that doesn't mean that the thing is 13.75 billion light years away. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Size - the observable universe is about 46 billion light years in radius.

Oh my goodness... that's absolutely fascinating, thanks! I was always under the impression that it was 13.75 billion light years (cause that's how it was told to me) but I never considered that, if the universe is continually expanding and it is expanding at an accelerating rate, the light which has traveled 13.75 billion light years to get to us ... well, in that intervening time the thing which emitted the light is no longer at the location it was when the light was emitted!

Wow... That's a cool new fact that only someone who's geeky about physics would be into... lol

Thanks for the reply!

-S

[Sowilo]

Slightly bumping this thread for a post no one cares about, but my 80 year old Planets professor used this particular comic to explain the size of the universe to us a few weeks ago. It was one of the cooler moments in school I've had this year.

That is all

[freckledgoodness]

The cat being dropped from the top totally should have landed on its feet at the bottom. I expected it.

[Tabasco]

The Astronomy Picture of the Day a few days back has an awesome, interactive flash widget illustrating these concepts, from the very smallest to the very largest. Thanks to this comic, I expected to see various silliness at either end ... there wasn't, but it's pretty neat all the same:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html

Here's just one small part of it: