Things I Found on the Internet will be an ongoing blog series highlighting cool things found on the internet that aren’t maker related, but might be enjoyable or good references or examples of design to experience.
Today’s Theme Is: Space and Spacetime! These are interactive visualizations, games, and videos that are both entertaining and informative about space and spacetime itself.
The observable universe is really, really big. 93 billion light years! It means light from that edge would take 93 billion years to each our eyes! (How can that be if our galaxy is only 13.8 billion years old? The simple answer is because the universe has been expanding since the big bang– if you’re more curious about I recommend looking into general relativity.)
The following are some interactive data visualizations and videos that can help visualize and put in perspective just how big everything is!
The Scale of the Universe by Cary and Michael Huang has been around since the days of Flash, it’s one of my personal favorites to use as a fun and playful way of data visualization. Travel from theoretical quantum planck length to the span of the observable universe!
Neal Agarwal has created The Size of Space with more updated information and a more mobile friendly design. Start off with the size of a human and travel to the scale of the observable universe!
In a similar vein, Josh Worth created If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel is a side scrolling experience that shows relative distances and sizes of our Solar System’s planets (and some of its moons and dwarf planets).
Nikon hosts its own scale, called Universcale. They allow you to explore each entry and share facts from protons to the known universe!
YouTube has a host of comparison videos! Metal Ball Studios have created videos comparing the size of comets, asteroids, moons, exoplanets, stars, and galaxies!
Honorable mention for Red Side, which uses Starkiller Base from Star Wars as a reference in theirs, and also dedicating 20 minutes to universal comparison.
Harry Evett and Times Infinity are more updated, being made in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
Spacetime is the concept that time is as much as dimension as length/width/height. It helps explains some effects of things traveling faster than light. Which at this moment, I will recommend PBS’ Space Time YouTube channel for more equally mind blowing information about spacetime and our universe.
This section covers some neat data visualization on the history of our universe.
NASA has a static chart to view, which is great, but not so interactive.
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics has created a little interactive data visualization and video explaining the current theory of the history of of our universe.
The Cosmic Calendar is a way to understand our universe’s history broken down to the scale of one year. (We only arrive on the last few seconds of of December 31st to put it in perspective.) An unknown person (or persons) put together the Cosmic Calendar in Google Calendars .
Melodysheep has created a beautiful 13 minute video timelapsing from the Big Bang to today. He’s followed up with a 25 minute video from now to the current theory of the end of universe. (Don’t panic! It won’t be for another sexdecillion years– that’s 1 with 96 zeroes.)
(Semi-related–I also recommend his Symphony of Science and Terra Lumina projects if you enjoy music.)
If you’re short on time, Bright Side breaks it down real quick with eight minute videos on the Beginning and End of the Universe. (Though I do recommend melodysheep’s more.)
Explore the universe from the comfort of your computer! In this section, I will share some simulators and video “tours” of the universe. Some of the simulators are free, some will have to be purchased, and I’ll let you know which.
Deep Space Map is a little older and made by stitching photos together and limited to a few cosmic objects, but I appreciate it’s early web feel. It’s reminiscent of the original Google Sky– which you can still explore.
You can also explore the original Google Moon and Google Mars, sites they had before they integrated it all into Google Maps. The benefit to this is you can explore other terrestrial planets (Venus, Mercury, Mars), and some of the solar system’s moons, and even inside the International Space Station! To see this feature you just need to keep zooming out on Earth until a lar on the left side of the user interface appears.
100,000 Stars is a Chrome Experiment made by Google Data Arts Team to explore beyond our solar system to the edge of our own Milky Way! It humorously warns Scientific accuracy is not guaranteed. Please do not use this visualization for interstellar navigation.
Michael Chang’s One Million Stars works in a similar fashion, but with the Online Star Registry. So if you registered a star in someone’s name, you can find it!
The Sky Live is a real time planetarium showing you what the sky is like from a position on Earth. (You can set to where you want!) This is more akin to the newer Google Sky Map app for mobile devices. (There’s plenty of planetarium apps on Google and iOS so take a look!)
Space Engine is a paid simulator game, but older versions are free. It is not available for Mac and Linux machines, though.
Universe Sandbox is just as it is as described. Using the known laws of physics of our own universe, you can create (or destroy) your own universe! Or travel and explore our own! It is available on PC, Mac, Linux, and several VR systems!
Or if you want to go open source, there’s a few. Celestia is a free space simulator that can work on PC, as well as macOS, iOS, and Android. There’s also a site for addons created by other you can add to improve your experience (like adding an Imperial Star Destroyer just because).
Open Space was created by the American Museum of Natural History with several universities as a open source data visualization software of the observable universe. It is still in Beta, but you can still play around with it.
Partiview is another open source data visualization tool created by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It states it is a tool for “4D assets”, meaning most of its usage is as space simulator.
AMNH has a Digital Universe section, where you can see their mapping efforts in either of these software.
If you’d rather just watch, Cater Emmart, Director of astrovisiulization at AMNH’S Hayden Planetarium has created a guided tour of the known universe. Or a quick little six minute tour with their actual Planetarium software.
(Bonus: Not educational but popped up when I was looking for Celestia, there’s a mobile app called Solar Smash. It’s less about exploring the solar system and more on wrecking it. I had a bit of fun exploring it that I couldn’t help sharing.)
Next time, we return from our cosmic journey to explore the deepest oceans and highest mountains of our own planet!
