September 29, 2008
#482: Height explain
Top of observable universe
[Black Hat is standing on top, throwing a black kitty down.]
Black Cat: Mrowl!
[Map of the universe from observable universe to Earth. Each area of item is labeled. Labels left to right, up to down:]
(46 billion light years up)
Hubble Deep Field Objects
-One billion light years-
Great Attractor
Antennae Galaxies (colliding)
Andromeda
Holy crap lots of space
-One million light years-
Magellanic Clouds
Edge of galaxy
Galactic center
Crab Nebula
Orion Nebula
Horsehead Nebula
Romulan neutral zone
The Pleiades, duh!
Rigel
Betelgeuse
Ford Prefect
[Three arrows are pointing up above three lines with the following label:]
-Expanding shell of radio transmissions-
[Above a dotted line:]
Edge of federation sector 0-0-1
Pollux
Arcturus
Missing WMDs
Sirius
Barnard’s Star
Alpha Centauri
-One parsec-
-One light year-
Oort Cloud (?)
Bupkis
Comet which will destroy Earth in late 2063
Pioneer 10
Voyager I
Eris (All hail Discordia!)
Pluto (Not a planet. Neener neener.)
Neptune
Uranus
Saturn
[Two arrows point to two moons, one next to each of the planets above and below.]
<– Life –>
Jupiter
Asteroids
Mars
Venus
Sun
Mercury
Spaceship Planet Express: Hey, a heaping bowl of salt!
Spaceship Discovery One: Open the fridge door, Hal.
Moon
Human altitude record (Apollo 13)
2nd place: Snoop Dogg
Space elevator - One of these days, promise!
Geosynchronous Orbit
GPS satellites
Lunar lander: In retrospect, they shouldn’t have sent a poet. I have no idea how to land.
International Space Station
Space junk
-Official edge of space (100 km)-
Meteors
-1/10 ATM-
High altitude balloons
Airliners
Shuttle Columbia lost
-1/2 ATM-
Cory Doctrow
Everest
Helicopters (6000 m)
Cueball: Woo Python!
[A vertical scale is drawn along the right side of the picture, starting at 1 km and getting progressivly smaller and smaller.]
1 km
-800 m-
Burj Dubai (~800 m)
500
400
Eiffel Tower (325 m)
200
Kites
Great Pyramid (140 m)
Pop fly
Redwood (115 m)
100m
Oak (20 m)
A person in the oak: Hey squirrels!
Tallest stilts
Brachiosaur (13 m)
Giraffe (8 m)
[Megan and Cueball holding the kite are labeled:]
Folks
The observable universe, from top to bottom
On a log scale
Sizes are not to scale, but heights above the Earth’s surface are accurate on a log scale. (That is, each step up is double the height.)