Thinking big: Entire observable universe in one stellar picture
Pablo Carlos Budassi was thinking big.
Using logarithmic maps of the universe from Princeton University and images from NASA, the musician has created a rendition of the entire observable universe — all in one disc.
The concept is a bit hard to wrap your head around. In the words of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Space "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is." Rendering it all on a plain-old linear scale would prove ... daunting, to say the least.
But as described by TechInsider, using a logarithmic scale "each chunk of the circle represents a field of view several orders of magnitude larger than the one before it. That's why the entire observable universe can fit inside the circle."
The TechInsider report said Budassi got the idea after making hexaflexagons for his son's birthday. As one does.
The image puts our solar system at the center (don't you feel important), then the inner and outer planets, the Kuiper belt, the Oort cloud, Alpha Centauri, the Perseus Arm, the Milky Way galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy, nearby galaxies, the Cosmic Web, cosmic microwave radiation and Big Bang's invisible plasma on the edge.
We imagine somewhere, just a pixel wide, is a tiny "you are here" sign near the middle.
Click the image above for a larger version.