Wednesday, February 13, 2008

cool tool: universcale

our knowledge and experiencing of the universe is slowly becoming larger and more detailed as we develop technologies that allow us to see what can’t be seen and to comprehend the incomprehensible.

all the way from a scanning electron micrograph image of an aerobic bacterium that lives in the water layer that surrounds soil particles.
(reproduced by permission of photo researchers, inc.)

to the deep field images obtained from the hubble space observatory in which we see the beginnings of this iteration of the universe.


the universcale is an amazing piece of work that attempts to describe units of scale from the most minute to the most massive within the human experience. i came across this incredible tool a little while ago and at first i didn’t quite understand it. then i clicked on the “help” button and it all became clear. this is a tool of scale. at each level of scale - physically, chronologically - there is a detailed description of that element. it takes time to load, it takes time to explore but then you are looking at our understanding of much that we know inside this universe.

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