This delightful, humorous and informative picture from the
XKCD site is worthy of detailed study. Among the real items you find the 'Romulan neutral zone' and 'Ford Prefect'.
Being on a logarithmic scale lends a rather special perspective to the universe.
One of my favourites :)
ReplyDeleteIt occurred to me a few months ago that the further you look into the cosmos, the further back in time you are seeing, so, if you could see 14 billion light-years, you would see the big bang, but the universe you would be looking at would be very close and very small. In fact, it would be inside you.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, the further you look in the cosmos, the closer what you're seeing gets to you but the longer ago you are seeing it.
But of course there would be an opaque barrier at about BB+100,000 years because light couldn't get far before atoms formed.