[HN Gopher] Size of Life
___________________________________________________________________
Size of Life
Author : eatonphil
Score : 2455 points
Date : 2025-12-10 16:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (neal.fun)
(TXT) w3m dump (neal.fun)
| hartator wrote:
| Always awesome with by Neal.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Cool, but a little more thought on the content rather than the
| presentation would improve it. For example starting with an
| arbitrary segment of DNA double helix and saying how "tall" this
| arbitrary segment is, is just silly.
|
| Instead, it should show how _wide_ it is. And for extra coolness,
| keep it in frame, coiling longer and longer as you go, and
| eventually have the same strand, which has been with us all the
| time, as a specific example (e.g. human chromosome 7 or some
| such) by _length_
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| double clicking makes the animation jitter. ive had to deal with
| matching derivatives of smooth slopes in rendering as well. the
| animation seems to be finite time (and so variable velocity) and
| mashing click is just updating the final point without matching
| the current derivative.
| yunwal wrote:
| I don't understand how the location of a 377 foot tall tree could
| be kept secret. Wouldn't that type of thing be visible in
| satellite imagery at the very least?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It's not sticking straight up from the ground in Kansas.
| Hyperion has many siblings nearby and is on rocky terrain which
| conceals its overall height.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| There are a lot of 300 foot trees in the general vicinity, so
| you'd need to actually measure to be precisely sure
| Petersipoi wrote:
| It isn't a secret. The location can easily be found if you
| Google it.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It is literally a secret. The location cannot easily be found
| with Google. Go ahead, try and find it.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| And if you do, don't post it.
| efilife wrote:
| were you able to? I wasn't
|
| http://famousredwoods.com/hyperion/
|
| Nevermind!
| housecarpenter wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| "The exact location of Hyperion is nominally secret but is
| available via internet search.[12] However, in July 2022, the
| Redwood Park superintendent closed the entire area around the
| tree, citing "devastation of the habitat surrounding Hyperion"
| caused by visitors. Its base was trampled by the overuse and as
| a result ferns no longer grow around the tree.[13]
|
| Measures to protect the Hyperion tree were officially
| implemented in 2022 when the National Park Service (NPS) closed
| public access to its location in Redwood National Park.[14][15]
| Anyone who gets too close could face up to six months in jail
| and a $5,000 maximum fine.[13][16][17]"
| jphoward wrote:
| It seems to be like some of the scales slightly off?
|
| If you are looking at the ladybird (ladybug) with the amoeba to
| the left, the amoeba isn't an order of the magnitude smaller - it
| would actually be visible by the human eye (bigger than a grain
| of sand)? Indeed, the amoeba seems the same size as the
| ladybird's foot?
|
| Similarly, this makes the bumblebee appear smaller than a human
| finger (the in the adjacent picture), which isn't the case?
| elicash wrote:
| I came to the comments to express surprise that amoebas were so
| large. It appears they vary wildly in size (as small as 2.3
| micrometers... but up to 20 cm, or nearly 8 inches).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba#Size_range
| adrian_b wrote:
| It is not right to call the xenophyophore that is on the last
| row, and which can have a size of up to 20 cm as an "amoeba".
|
| Only the next row above it, with Pelomyxa, is indeed an
| amoeba and one that is very frequently encountered and which
| usually has sizes not much less than 1 millimeter and
| sometimes it can reach a size of a few mm.
|
| The true amoebas are much more closely related to humans,
| than to xenophyophores (giant marine unicellular living
| beings) or to plants.
|
| Besides the true amoebas there are also a few other kinds of
| unicellular eukaryotes with shape-shifting cells, e.g.
| foraminifera, radiolarians and others, but already in the
| first half of the 19th century it was recognized that those
| other groups change their shapes in a different way than the
| amoebas, so they were classified separately, even if the term
| "amoeboid cell" has always been used about any cell with
| variable shape.
|
| The true amoebas are related to the group formed by animals
| and fungi, and there are some amoebas that have a simple form
| of multicellularity, so it is likely that some of the
| mechanisms needed for the evolution of multicellularity have
| been inherited from a common ancestor of animals, fungi and
| amoebae.
|
| The multicellular or multinucleate amoebae that belong to
| Myxomycetes (one of the kinds of slime moulds) can reach much
| bigger sizes, e.g. a diameter of up to 1 meter, because they
| do not have the size limitation that exists for simple
| unicellular eukaryotes.
| elicash wrote:
| Thank you for that info/correction!
| earlyriser wrote:
| On the other side, wasps could be so tiny. like you could put
| thousands of them inside an amoeba volume.
|
| "Megaphragma mymaripenne is a microscopically sized wasp. At
| 200 mm in length, it is the third-smallest extant insect,
| comparable in size to single-celled organisms. It has a
| highly reduced nervous system, containing only 7400 neurons,
| several orders of magnitude fewer than in larger insects."
| albedoa wrote:
| The males of _dicopomorpha echmepterygis_ are even smaller,
| with wide sexual dimorphism:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicopomorpha_echmepterygis
|
| I never knew about these either.
| selcuka wrote:
| I got surprised by that too, and while comparing its size to
| the next organism (Tardigrade) I learned that every member of
| the same species of tardigrades has the exact same number of
| cells [1], which was even more surprising for me:
|
| > Eutelic organisms have a fixed number of somatic cells when
| they reach maturity, the exact number being relatively
| constant for any one species. This phenomenon is also
| referred to as cell constancy. Development proceeds by cell
| division until maturity; further growth occurs via cell
| enlargement only.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutely
| glenstein wrote:
| I'm seeing the amoeba as approximately the size of the heel
| segment of a ladybug's leg. I consider lady bugs pretty small
| in an intuitive sense, their legs quite small and the smallest
| end segment to be especially small. I think that leaves an
| amoeba on the fringes of distinguishable perception which seems
| right to me, unless I'm overestimating their size.
| ModernMech wrote:
| The tardigrade vs. ladybug gave me pause. So a tardigrade is
| about the side of a ladybugs eye?
| adrian_b wrote:
| Actually the tardigrade used as an example is quite big at
| 500 micrometers.
|
| Most tardigrades are not much bigger than 100 micrometers.
|
| Tardigrades, together with nematodes, rotifers, mites and a
| few more rarely encountered groups are among the smallest
| animals and they are smaller than many of the bigger among
| the unicellular eukaryotes. That is why they have been
| discovered only after the invention of the microscope.
|
| The tardigrades have evolved towards smaller and smaller
| sizes very early, already during the Cambrian. It is
| interesting that they are segmented animals, like their
| relatives the arthropods and the velvet worms, but they have
| very few segments, because in order to achieve such a small
| size they have lost all intermediate segments, so the
| segments that now form their body were originally the
| segments of the head, and now they are followed immediately
| by the original segments of the tail, without the original
| body that connected the head to the tail. Thus they have been
| miniaturized by losing their body and becoming a walking head
| (the legs of the tardigrades are what in arthropods have
| become appendages of the mouth, e.g. mandibles and maxillae).
| teo_zero wrote:
| But if scales were perfectly respected, how could you see both
| a neuron and a human on the screen?
| prmph wrote:
| Cool visualization, but I also noticed the switch from SI units
| to imperial. From micrometers to inches, which was jarring and
| hard for me to compare.
|
| I'd suggest keeping the SI unit , or at least having both once
| we get to the level of inches.
| s1mon wrote:
| I found that jarring as well. There's a toggle in the upper
| right to switch to metric.
|
| Even with setting it to metric, it progresses through units
| based on the scale. I realize that scientists love to work in
| scientific notation, and progressing from nanometers to
| micrometers, mm, cm, and finally meters sort of follows that
| kind of logic. I wonder how it would feel if the whole thing
| was in constant units or at least there was an option for
| that.
| dartharva wrote:
| The T-rex appears taller than the giraffe, but it isn't and the
| scale in the website itself shows it.
| macintux wrote:
| > A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once
| a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites
| smallerfish wrote:
| I like it, but the switch from metric to inches is confusing, and
| I think introduces a bug - there's no way a sea snail is 5-6
| neurons high.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Some of your neurons stretch from your brain to your big toe.
| 1.5m, or more in a tall person.
| smallerfish wrote:
| Correct, but not the one on the site.
| yesitcan wrote:
| There's no way a tardigrade is half a sea snail.
| Mogzol wrote:
| You can change the units in the top corner. It defaults to
| metric for me, but if your browser language is "en-US" you get
| imperial by default.
| siavosh wrote:
| Wonderful. The music, illustrations, and sliding sound effect
| reminded me of the game Braid.
| luqtas wrote:
| the slinding at some point made me wonder what if i was playing
| Tinder
| hmokiguess wrote:
| This was awesome! Also, I couldn't stop my child brain from
| anticipating "your mom" at the end.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I always click when I see neal.fun.
| mda wrote:
| I like the stuff un the sute but the number if partners and
| affiliates in the consent window is very off putting.
| troupo wrote:
| It's _only_ 141 TCF vendor(s) and 69 ad partner(s), with no way
| to reject all, and you have to manually click on every
| "vendor" to remove consent.
|
| It's the second or third time I see this "managed by Google
| compliant with IAB" (note: not with GDPR)
| thn-gap wrote:
| This is super infuriating. I wish there was a way to offshore
| the effort and work needed to toggle each option off to the
| culprit website. Perhaps when website A presents you with
| such hostile prompts, take their contact email, and subscribe
| it with automation to each of the vendors. I'm just too tired
| of this shit.
| jakozaur wrote:
| I wish Neal would do behind the scenes, how he built this art. I
| wonder whether LLM assistants like Claude Code make such an
| interactive show more feasible.
|
| He previously did a game "Infinite Craft" which leveraged Llama
| models. However, I was only able to find an outdated blog from
| 2019.
| jonahx wrote:
| I think you'd notice a pretty big difference in an LLM clone of
| this site. The art, music, and other small wouldn't be as
| consistent or hang together as nicely.
| benatkin wrote:
| If I could download the LLM clone, and share it, I think I'd
| prefer it. This is just a website that could at any moment
| disappear, it isn't like a book.
| Bnichs wrote:
| Reminds me of the video game Everything. Its a really cool game
| where you explore the various scales of the universe. It has its
| quirks (somewhat phoned in graphics like animals walking) but the
| concept and execution are great IMO, would love a sequel. Also
| bonus points for featuring Alan watts as a core character.
| Magi604 wrote:
| The visual scale seems off, especially on the smaller end of
| things. Also, are Velociraptors really that small? Jurassic Park
| lied to me.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Spielberg took a Deinonychus and called it a Velociraptor
| because it sounded cooler.
| mkl wrote:
| No, Michael Crichton did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deino
| nychus#Cultural_significa...
| travisgriggs wrote:
| > A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once
| a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.
|
| Definitely worthy the scroll!
| 8cvor6j844qw_d6 wrote:
| Makes a good profile description on certain websites.
| dim13 wrote:
| Also: Banana - Although not technically living, it does make
| for a good size comparison.
| mihaaly wrote:
| It had to be added:
|
| > Tyrannosaurus rex. One of the largest land predators ever,
| it had teeth the size of a banana
| lrpe wrote:
| Are there supposed to be pictures? I passed a human silhouette,
| but that was it.
| vadepaysa wrote:
| Beautiful! I love the human feet always visible in the
| background! It helps me set perspective.
| bitpush wrote:
| > Velociraptor > Smaller than usually depicted, the Velociraptor
| was actually only about the size of a turkey.
|
| This is an interesting fact.
| mkmk wrote:
| Nice that the back button works.
| thundergolfer wrote:
| Pretty glad the 9 foot long Arthopleura centipede went extinct
| 300 million years ago. No one wants to deal with that thing.
| kkylin wrote:
| We've still got this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_aphroditois
|
| Thankfully they don't live on land.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| That's fresh nightmare fuel all right
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Not really bothered by snakes, sharks or spiders. But those
| things (and cave centipedes) look terrifying.
| adrian_b wrote:
| It was a millipede, not a centipede, which probably ate fungi
| or decaying plants.
|
| So it was not a dangerous predator, though it could have been
| poisonous, like many modern millipedes.
| milancurcic wrote:
| Neal delivers. I recently learned that viruses are not considered
| living being, but I'm nevertheless happy they're included here
| because they're both relevant and interesting in this context.
| cainxinth wrote:
| Viruses are to life as LLMs are to reasoning: they often behave
| like their category expects but not for the same reasons as the
| genuine article.
| seemaze wrote:
| ..er, a parasitic threat to life and happiness that become an
| endemic drag on global well being?
| tock wrote:
| Every other living organism looking at human beings: yeah.
| paddleon wrote:
| as a former virologist, I love the thought that LLMs are the
| virus of reasoning :)
| graybeardhacker wrote:
| Once a virologist always a virologist I always say.
| rssoconnor wrote:
| Not that I'm qualified to reply, but I think this is debated. I
| seem to recall reading in "Immune" by Philipp Dettmer that
| there is an argument that a virus is analogous to a spore stage
| of life, and the virus begins "living" when it plants itself
| inside a cell full of "nutrients", sheds it's skin and begins
| consuming and replicating.
| dJLcnYfsE3 wrote:
| It is always going to be controversial but after discovery of
| prions - needle shifted to "self-replicating means nothing
| and viruses are also dead". Then scientists also found
| viruses large enough that they get infected with other
| viruses, and parasitic cells that are missing most parts
| required for metabolism, so it is getting more fuzzy again.
| alkyon wrote:
| They do have genes and are subject to natural selection so to
| say the least they are a clear borderline case.
| dsego wrote:
| I was taught in school they were something in between.
| dartharva wrote:
| Hey, if they originated naturally and interact with the
| environment and reproduce, they are living beings. Mere human
| taxonomists can't just "classify" away the fact.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Are crystalline structures alive?
| LtWorf wrote:
| The one that destroyed Data's planet was, I'd say.
| kruczek wrote:
| You are doing the same classification. It all depends on the
| definition of what a living being is.
| 4ndr3vv wrote:
| MRS GREN would like to have a word with you :)
| someNameIG wrote:
| From what I remember from undergrad the reason they're not life
| is that they lack their own metabolism, they use the metabolism
| of host cells. And metabolism needs to be a constant thing,
| they don't have any when outside a cell.
| ncgl wrote:
| Great use of sound!
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| Reminds me of the classic Scale of the Universe flash toy by Cary
| Huang (now available in HTML 5!):
|
| https://htwins.net/scale2/
| baxtr wrote:
| If you're interested to read something on that topic I highly
| recommend the essay "That's About the Size of It" by Isaac Asimov
| (in his book "View from a Height").
|
| He argues that human perception of animal size is skewed because
| humans use themselves as a benchmark.
|
| He takes a logarithmic approach to illustrate where humans
| actually fit within the overall scale of the animal kingdom. We
| are way larger than we think we are!
| jiggawatts wrote:
| We are megafauna predators! We've wiped them almost all out,
| which makes it less obvious, but that's our ecological niche.
| kej wrote:
| Reminds me of https://scaleofuniverse.com . I think confining it
| to just living things removes the perspective of "Wow, we're
| really small compared to the rest of the universe".
| abustamam wrote:
| Somewhat related!
|
| https://youtu.be/XRdh8gmVR90?si=PvgoXrgjV62tsUy6
| creatonez wrote:
| There is another visualization from the same author, that
| starts at an astronaut and ends with the observable universe
| https://neal.fun/size-of-space/
| seemaze wrote:
| Just delightful, thank you Neal.
| shmoe wrote:
| An obvious benefit of "humans adapting to create websites"!
| cs702 wrote:
| _Beautiful._ It 's clearly a labor of love.
|
| The authors deserve our support. Buy them a coffee via the
| provided link.
|
| Thank you for sharing this on HN.
| setgree wrote:
| He has many other cool visualizations!
|
| Space Elevator: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45640226
|
| Deep Sea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21850527
| abustamam wrote:
| Deep Sea one is scary for some reason. It just gives me
| shivers to think about how deep the sea is, and what horrors
| lurk down there. I know that I'll never encounter such a
| being, but still kinda creepy.
| littlekey wrote:
| >for some reason
|
| This is a pretty common fear, just look up thalassophobia
| (or don't! sorry!)
| simonw wrote:
| He was also responsible for one of the worst web pages ever
| created: https://neal.fun/stimulation-clicker/
|
| (It's utterly brilliant but monstrous.)
| aschobel wrote:
| why did i click. ha, it's incredible how addictive simple
| dopamine loops are.
|
| Thank you!
| Cyphase wrote:
| Send help.
| arein3 wrote:
| Thabk god the page crashed after 15m
| connicpu wrote:
| If it doesn't crash there is actually an ending
| stOneskull wrote:
| woo.. finally got there!
|
| all achievements.. and i made stacks on bitcoin
| echelon wrote:
| I love Neal's work so much. He's constantly making some of
| the coolest stuff on the web. I'm utterly delighted every
| time I see his domain on the front page of HN.
|
| I hope he never stops making these art pieces - everything he
| creates brings joy, regardless of whether it's educational or
| funny or whimsical. I'm in awe of his creative output, his
| manner of communication, and his ability to steal hours of
| our time playing ridiculous little games that make us
| question the fundamentals of life and society.
|
| He's right up there with XKCD in my mind.
|
| --
|
| This is probably the only time I'll use my super pedantic
| mode on Neal's work, and it's only because I love biology -
|
| > DNA
|
| > The genetic instructions for life
|
| > 3.5 nanometers tall
|
| DNA has a lot of dimensional metrics. It gets complicated.
| The people that study this stuff really care because it's
| essential for how our enzymes work, and small differences in
| spacing tolerances would totally break all of the machinery.
|
| This "3.5 nm" figure is roughly the height of one turn of the
| helix for one form of DNA (B-DNA). The figure is showing
| multiple turns in the cartoon illustration.
|
| In theory, you could create a polymer of infinite length (or
| height).
|
| B-DNA is 34 A per turn, with 10.5 bp per turn (table 1) :
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6545/
|
| > Blue Whale
|
| > King of the animal kingdom, it is the largest animal to
| have ever lived. It can eat up to 40 million krill per day
| during peak feeding season.
|
| Please fix this one, Neal! We don't know that the blue whale
| is the largest animal to have ever lived (even assuming we
| know we're just talking about earth).
|
| Blue whales are _perhaps_ the largest animal to have ever
| lived on earth. But we simply do not know. The fossil record
| is woefully incomplete.
|
| We even have new papers coming up all the time that challenge
| this:
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/whale-whale-may-
| be-b...
|
| Then refutations:
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/have-blue-whales-
| reg...
|
| This is undoubtedly the last time the claim to largest will
| ever be challenged. Even if we dug up no new fossils, the
| estimations of previous finds change all the time as we learn
| more.
|
| Also - what does "largest" mean? Mass? Length? Surface area?
|
| It's okay to say that they're the largest (by some metric)
| that we know of. But it is not correct to say that they're
| the largest to have ever lived - at least as far as we know
| or could ever know. And by setting an absolute, inquiring
| minds memorize the point and stop wondering.
|
| It's very probable that we'll never know the definitive
| answer to this.
| oasisbob wrote:
| The dimensioning of DNA was an immediate turn-off for me. A
| common biochemistry demo is to show how long and
| macroscopically visible a chromosome can be. Saying DNA is
| 3.5 nm tall (long?) flies in the face of what is a pretty
| interesting and notable experience for a lot of people.
|
| It essentially starts the whole project with a weird take
| on "How long is a piece of string?"
|
| > In theory, you could create a polymer of infinite length
| (or height).
|
| Works pretty well in practice too.
| Timwi wrote:
| > _(even assuming we know we 're just talking about earth)_
|
| This is a nitpick, but life on other planets wouldn't be
| called "animals". Animal is a clade defined by common
| ancestry. The only way you could have an extraterrestrial
| animal is for it to have evolved on Earth and then migrated
| somehow, and I think we can fairly confidently rule that
| out.
| tim333 wrote:
| Nitpic nitpic. I bet if we find animal like life on other
| planets people will call them animals. Langage use isn't
| that pedantic.
| abustamam wrote:
| You really can't go wrong with any of Neal's fun projects!
| p1nkpineapple wrote:
| Absolutely loved that the intensity of the music is synced with
| the swiping. Fantastic job as always!
| wpwpwpw wrote:
| beautiful illustrations, beautiful site
| crubier wrote:
| My kids will LOVE this
| inciampati wrote:
| Very beautiful. Love this.
|
| If it helps, AFAIK (I do atomic force microscopy of DNA), DNA's
| height is closer to 2nm than 4.
| alyxya wrote:
| Minor thing that bothers me is that I can't scroll through the
| things like in the deep sea or space elevator.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| The dynamic soundscape is delightful, as it subtly adds
| instruments and musical texture as you progress. And going back
| down the scale regresses it to simple again. Smoothly done.
|
| It reminded me of Operation Neptune (1991): each level starts
| with just one channel, probably percussion, and as you progress
| through the rooms it adds and removes more channels or sometimes
| switches to a different section of music. It is unfortunately all
| sharp cuts, no attempts at smoothing or timing instrument entry
| and exit. A couple of samples:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LNaatyoQk is an hour of
| gameplay revelling in "the dynamic and sometimes beautiful music
| of Operation Neptune" using a Roland MT-32 MIDI synthesiser; and
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPxEdQ4wx9s&list=PL3FC048B13...
| is the PCM files used on some platforms (if you want to compare
| that track with the MT-32, it starts at 28 minutes).
| modeless wrote:
| Man I played Operation Neptune a lot when I was a kid. I wonder
| if it was the first game to do this style of adaptive music
| layering. It predates the iMUSE system used in LucasArts games
| like X-Wing and TIE Fighter.
|
| For anyone curious, you can actually play it here:
| https://archive.org/details/msdos_Super_Solvers_Operation_Ne...
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The arcade classic Space Invaders had a primitive soundscape
| in that every time the remaining invaders advance, it plays a
| short bass note. As fewer and fewer invaders remain, it takes
| less time for them to advance, and the note repeats faster
| and faster, it adds a remarkable amount of increasing tension
| as each level progresses.
|
| So not exactly the same, but perhaps prototypical. I think
| Asteroids did as well.
| mrandish wrote:
| Interesting Space Invaders Trivia:
|
| The game speeding up as invaders are eliminated was an
| unintended consequence of the hardware running full speed
| to draw all 55 invaders. As invaders are eliminated the
| draw calls finish faster and the game speeds up. There is
| no code in the game to throttle the speed. The 2 Mhz 8080
| is always drawing full speed. It's delightfully
| serendipitous this happens to ramp up the difficulty as you
| near the end of each level in such a compellingly perfect
| way. (https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-
| gaming/space-...)
|
| I've watched some interviews with the game's programmer
| Tomohiro Nishikado and, although translated (so subject to
| garbling), he seems to confirm this was a 'happy accident'.
| He indicates he set the max number of invaders based on
| what the hardware could draw but there was no intent to
| have the speed ramp up. Of course, he noticed that it did
| this during play testing but decided to keep it that way.
| Arguably, it's one of the most compelling aspects of the
| game. Modern emulators have to add code game-specific code
| to limit the speed or the game plays too fast. Leaving no
| CPU cycles unused is the sign of an elegant design.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| That reminds me of the music in the film "Inception", in
| which the extremely low-register bass-heavy music in the
| background of scenes from lower levels of dream-in-dream is
| actually the main score, played back dramatically (and
| semantically / thematically) slower and lower.
| wormpilled wrote:
| I absolutely loved that looping music track, please authors
| make it available.
| ralfhn wrote:
| From the author on twitter[1] "The background music is a
| cello performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga and composed by
| Aleix Ramon" [1]
| https://x.com/nealagarwal/status/1998788695449808920
| gizmo385 wrote:
| The music was breathtaking here - I'd absolutely pay for a
| version of it. Really solidified the experience
| ralfhn wrote:
| From the author on twitter[1] "The background music is a
| cello performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga and composed by
| Aleix Ramon"
|
| [1] https://x.com/nealagarwal/status/1998788695449808920
| voxleone wrote:
| I love how the music swells and becomes more intricate as life
| expands and grows more complicated.
| anon_cow1111 wrote:
| Anyone find an actual link for the finished track? Credits are
| mentioned on his site and twitter but I didn't find it anywhere
| when searching for the artist names.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this, I played Operation Neptune as a kid
| and never noticed the dynamic music!
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| This is something you do when scoring a game too, wonder if the
| author ever worked on game programming.
| jevogel wrote:
| The rest of the author's website is a bunch of games, so I'd
| say so.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| So I guess _Operation Neptune_ was the inspiration for UFO 50s
| _Porgy_?
|
| https://ufo50.miraheze.org/wiki/Porgy
| cachius wrote:
| Oh noes, I explored with sound off.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| It truly is, thanks for pointing it out! I just went through
| the entire site 5 minutes ago and it didn't occur to me to grab
| my headphones and turn sound on first.
| AleixR wrote:
| Hi there, I'm the composer of the soundtrack--glad that you
| enjoyed the music.
|
| The idea was to have a single instrument (a cello) that builds
| upon itself, like the cells in an organism. It starts with a
| very minimalistic loop, and new layers of music are
| progressively added as the organisms grow in size.
|
| Thanks for sharing Operation Neptune! I didn't know about it,
| but it's a great example of early adaptive game music.
| robrain wrote:
| I've got a sudden strong urge to play Katamari Damacy.
| adammarples wrote:
| What about that 3.5 sq mil fungi
| larodi wrote:
| yes indeed, fungi are under-represented here
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armillaria_ostoyae
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Why haven't I seen a Tardigrade with my eyeball? It seems like
| they are the size of a spot on a ladybug from the pics.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Because you clearly haven't spent enough time closely looking
| at pond and river water!
|
| Our local parks department has several annual events where they
| ask for volunteers to help perform benthic macroinvertebrate
| surveys. It basically amounts to meeting up at a local park
| with a couple people in waders dragging special nets along the
| bottom, dumping scoops of material into buckets and large,
| shallow, white trays, and others sitting at picnic tables with
| spoons, magnifying glasses, and muffin tins sorting out the
| critters that get caught in the nets.
|
| The cool part is that at the end, you can score the creek based
| on the quantity and types of larvae that you find: Caddisfly,
| mayfly, and stonefly larvae are very sensitive to factors like
| runoff from agriculture and road salt, sediment, water
| oxygenation, and other factors, beetles, crayfish, dragonflies,
| and scuds are moderately tolerant, while leeches, worms,
| midges, and flies will grow in anything. Thousands of these
| surveys happen every year, so you can compare the relative
| frequency and quantity of various species and determine the
| relative health of the stream.
|
| I don't know how many tardigrades you'll find just scooping
| 4-8mm nymphs and larvae by eye, but I've brought my microscope
| to a couple and put random droplets of water under a cover and
| slide: there are an astonishing number of tiny critters
| swimming around at any zoom level.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| You have seen a tardigrade with the naked eye (without
| microscope), that's as large as a spot on a ladybug?
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| No, sorry if that wasn't clear, I've not identified one by
| eye without a scope. Maybe your fine vision is better than
| mine, but all the tiniest things in a drop of water are
| just about indistinguishable without magnification. The
| kinds of water that have sufficient density to contain a
| tardigrade just look like they're full of grit, I don't
| think you could identify which speck was a tardigrade and
| which was just dirt.
|
| Nymphs are larger (that's why they call them "macro"
| invertebrates), but it's always good to have at least a
| magnifying glass if not a loupe or microscope on site.
| isametry wrote:
| As a non-native speaker, TIL that "magnifying glass" and
| "loupe" are not synonyms. According to Wikipedia:
|
| > [Loupes] generally have higher magnification than a
| magnifying glass, and are designed to be held or worn
| close to the eye.
| myself248 wrote:
| Do you set aside the tasty-looking ones and wrap it up with a
| seafood boil?
| rsynnott wrote:
| The spot on the ladybug is black against red, usually (there
| are many varieties); it's very conveniently highlighted. We're
| better at seeing "bold colour on bold colour" than "semi-
| translucent thing in water".
| JDEW wrote:
| Beautiful site. Also very pleased to see the mitochondrion being
| referred to as the powerhouse of the cell, as is law.
| dwa3592 wrote:
| [edited] - It's incredible to think that it starts from DNA, is
| 3.5nm tall and the solid silicon fins in our phone's transistor
| is twice that.
| kyriakos wrote:
| The chip is not smaller than 3.5nm; but a component on the chip
| is that small.
| sheepolog wrote:
| Very cool. I was surprised that orangutans are described as being
| only 2 feet 9 inches tall, I think most are a bit larger. Maybe
| when sitting they're under 3 feet? From wikipedia:
|
| "females typically stand 115 cm (45 in) tall and weigh around 37
| kg (82 lb), while adult males stand 137 cm (54 in) tall and weigh
| 75 kg (165 lb). The tallest orangutan recorded was a 180 cm (71
| in)."
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It's using the size of the ruler, matching the posture as shown
| in the image. A few keys over and there's a picture of a
| grizzly bear that says it is 1m or 3'4" tall. And maybe when
| it's on all fours, that's a typical measurement to the
| shoulders - its arm length, more or less.
|
| That's much shorter than the human at 1.7m or 5'7". From just
| those numbers, you might think that a human would weigh more
| than a grizzly or take one in a fight: But when a bear stands
| on its hind legs, it's 2.4m/8' tall and can be 800 lbs, I'd
| have put a grizzly way further to the right.
| Moxdi wrote:
| if anyone that made this sees this, you made a typo on the Dwarf
| Lanternshark, its not Columbia, its ColOmbia
| conorbergin wrote:
| >microns to inches
|
| absolutely foul
| modeless wrote:
| Reminds me of the classic "powers of 10" video:
| https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0. Someone ought to remake that but as
| a gaussian splat reconstruction, so you can freely move the
| camera as well as zoom.
| cgh wrote:
| "Compressible rodent" was not a phrase I thought I'd ever hear
| but I'm glad I did. Worth the price of a couple of coffees.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Banana, ha ha.
| ramaniyer wrote:
| cool and artistic app, how did you make this
| kayge wrote:
| If anyone wants to set this up to auto-run all the way to the
| right and then all the way back to the left, here is a vibe-coded
| (sorry) browser console script. Makes a great "screen-saver" if
| you kick off the script and then put your browser in full screen
| mode :) (function() { let direction
| = 'right'; // Start by going right let intervalId;
| function getCurrentAnimalName() { const animalDiv
| = document.querySelector('.animal-name'); return
| animalDiv ? animalDiv.textContent.trim() : ''; }
| function pressKey(keyCode) { const event = new
| KeyboardEvent('keydown', { key: keyCode ===
| 37 ? 'ArrowLeft' : 'ArrowRight', keyCode:
| keyCode, code: keyCode === 37 ? 'ArrowLeft' :
| 'ArrowRight', which: keyCode,
| bubbles: true });
| document.dispatchEvent(event); }
| function autoScroll() { const currentName =
| getCurrentAnimalName(); if
| (direction === 'right') { pressKey(39); //
| Right arrow if
| (currentName === 'Pando Clone') {
| console.log('Reached Pando Clone, switching to left');
| direction = 'left'; } } else
| { pressKey(37); // Left arrow
| if (currentName === 'DNA') {
| console.log('Reached DNA, switching to right');
| direction = 'right'; } }
| } // Start the interval intervalId =
| setInterval(autoScroll, 3000); // Log
| start message and provide stop function
| console.log('Auto-scroll started! To stop, call:
| stopAutoScroll()'); // Expose stop
| function globally window.stopAutoScroll = function()
| { clearInterval(intervalId);
| console.log('Auto-scroll stopped'); }; })();
| ekipan wrote:
| Cannot stand robot code. Thanks for the genuinely cool thing
| though. I hope you don't mind me rewriting, if only for my own
| satisfaction. { const s =
| window.scroller = {} const press = (key, code) => () =>
| document.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent('keydown', {
| key: key, keyCode: code, which: key, code: code,
| bubbles: true })); const step = () => {
| const div = document.querySelector('.animal-name')
| const name = div?.textContent.trim() if (name ===
| 'Pando Clone') s.dir = s.left if (name === 'DNA')
| s.dir = s.right s.dir() } s.left =
| press(37, 'ArrowLeft') s.right = s.dir = press(39,
| 'ArrowRight') s.start = (ms) => s.ival =
| setInterval(step, ms) s.stop = () =>
| clearInterval(s.ival) } scroller.start(5000)
| kayge wrote:
| I don't mind at all, your rewrite looks much more elegant.
| Thanks!
| ekipan wrote:
| You could try posting both at the LLM and ask it to explain
| the stuff I changed, if you're interested in learning more
| Javascript. Assuming you aren't already deep in the JS
| trenches and only vibed bc you couldn't be bothered.
| newman8r wrote:
| It claims a banana isn't technically living, but a banana has
| living cells so I'm not sure how accurate that is. I'm not sure
| when they're all considered 'dead' after harvesting though -
| maybe some wiggle room there.
| mritterhoff wrote:
| My understanding is that picked fruits and veg are still alive
| [1], and often respirating [2]. This is a big component in
| figuring out how to refrigerate them at the optimal
| temperatures and atmospheric makeup.
|
| 1. https://healthland.time.com/2013/06/21/theyre-alive-
| harveste... 2. https://agriculture.institute/food-chemistry-
| and-physiology/...
| HelloUsername wrote:
| I think the banana was mostly added as a joke:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiducial_marker#%22Banana_for_...
| newman8r wrote:
| I got the reference, it's just the 'not technically alive'
| part that I was calling out
| jakemanger wrote:
| This is simply beautiful, and will definitely inspire me with
| some arty projects I'm working on.
|
| Great work -> the minimalist UI, art and music fits amazingly.
|
| One thing I noticed: the site's images fail to load if the brave
| adblocker is on
| thangalin wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEHCCsFFIuY
|
| Star Size Comparison 3, simply a stunning visualization.
| jwpapi wrote:
| Neal is him
| system2 wrote:
| If I see a neal.fun link on HN, I click.
| marseysneed wrote:
| 1 nitpick: The Dwarf Lanternshark is not found off the coast of
| "Columbia" but "Colombia!"
| leourbina wrote:
| Came to say exactly the same thing :)
| phkahler wrote:
| EDIT: Nevermind. Perhaps it was an ad that I clicked on. Lots of
| comments here indicating they don't see it, and some that did.
|
| My Original comment here (too late to delete):
|
| Beware. When you reach the end there is a "more projects" button.
| In there is a cute IQ test (possibly appealing to the HN crowd).
| When you reach the end of the test it asks for email, and then
| ultimately wants $1 to get your results. If you pay by credit
| card due note that there is an auto-checked box for some $29.99
| per month subscription for... something.
| varenc wrote:
| Link? couldn't find the IQ test in more projects. And super
| skeptical neal.fun is trying to trick people into $30/month
| subscriptions
|
| edit: I turned off my ad blocker and discovered the site is
| showing some ads. Guessing you clicked on an ad?
|
| also it's pretty ironic because one of his projects is
| showcasing dark patterns: https://neal.fun/dark-patterns/
| waxpancake wrote:
| This is definitely not something Neal would ever do. Can you
| share the URL you're talking about? There's no IQ test in his
| projects list at all. https://neal.fun/
| pxndx wrote:
| Are you sure about that? for me it just leads to neal.fun,
| which is a well loved by HN list of projects, but no IQ test
| nor begging for money.
| abustamam wrote:
| I can't seem to find the IQ test. I see captcha and other
| "games"
| WD-42 wrote:
| Ironically this sounds like a piece of satire Neal would make.
| beejiu wrote:
| For what it's worth, there are AdSense interstitial ads on the
| site, so you probably got duped by one of those ads.
| krosaen wrote:
| Saw this too on mobile - I think it's an ad - I requested a
| paid ad-free version elsewhere in the comments
| foxrider wrote:
| Missing a mushroom from Oregon [1]
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-
| true-...
| runtimepanic wrote:
| Tools like this are surprisingly effective for teaching,
| especially compared to static diagrams. Interaction makes the
| scale differences stick.
| abustamam wrote:
| When my daughter is old enough, I'm definitely going to show
| her a bunch of visualizations on Neal's site as supplementary
| education. I learned so much from these visualizations as an
| adult, and even without being able to read you can get a sense
| of scale.
| runtimepanic wrote:
| Totally agree! Even as adults, the sense of scale hits
| differently when you interact with it. Your daughter will
| probably love discovering it too.
| mncharity wrote:
| > When my daughter is old enough
|
| Fwiw, I've done a pinch-nail-hand-arms 1-10-100-1000 mm "body
| as size reference" a couple of times around 5ish. And a 1000x
| "micro view" "pinch is zoomed to arms size" "it's like a
| scale model or doll playset - everything zoomed together"
| world of "bacteria sprinkles, red blood cell candies (M&M
| minis or concave Smarties minis or Sweetarts - there's lots
| of cell candy analogs), hair poles, salt/sugar boxes".
| Stories of sitting on a grain of salt and eating... etc; pet
| eyelash mites. No idea if it actually worked.
|
| I did some user-test videos, now only on archive.org.[1]
| Hmm... the "Arms, hands" video there now doesn't seem to play
| inline? - but does wget'ed and browsered. :/
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221007220513/www.clarifysci
| enc...
| nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote:
| I felt like I was at a museum exhibit. It is fantastic.
| krosaen wrote:
| Neal.fun is good clean fun - my kids love it too. Neal, if you
| are listening, would pay for an ad-free version (I already bought
| you some coffees too).
| sungho_ wrote:
| What surprised me most was how large a single neuron is.
| jbotz wrote:
| In generalized, abstract sort of way it's probably accurate,
| but in reality most neurons don't look much like that and many
| have dendrites orders of magnitude longer than the one in that
| image. Stringing all your dendrites end-to-end they can
| probably easily go to the moon and back.
| genix wrote:
| Well made!
| js2 wrote:
| Nit: the tool-tips on the action icons in the top-right aren't
| consistent.
|
| When music is playing the tool tip is "unmute" which is a verb.
| It should either be "mute" (to indicate what clicking will do) or
| "unmuted" (adjective) indicating the current state. Similarly,
| when the music is muted the tool-tip should either be "muted" or
| "unmute".
|
| I'm not sure _which_ is wanted (verb or adjective) because the
| ruler tool-tip uses "Hide Ruler" and "Show Ruler" (verb), while
| the units tool-tip uses "Units: imperial" and "Units: Metric"
| (adjective). The info tool-tip ("Info") is also an adjective.
|
| For consistency, I'd use a verb-phrase in all the tool tips:
|
| - "Show info"
|
| - "Switch units to metric/imperial"
|
| - "Hide/show ruler"
|
| - "Mute/unmute music"
|
| I mean, I know this is pedantic nit-picking, but the site is so
| perfect, what else am I going to do?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Great job.
|
| I did a side project that helps with comparisons, but in a rather
| different way (e.g. how many African elephants does something
| weigh). Not as slick as this site, but someone might find it
| useful:
|
| http://howmanyelephants.co.uk/
| mncharity wrote:
| Nice. Two quick UI thoughts. Upon loading, perhaps start with
| some unit selected, and a default amount 1, so there's
| immediate content to be seen? And to extend the experience,
| maybe add a "dice roll" button, so users can "see more neat
| things" click-click-click without the cognitive overhead of
| pathing the option space
| hermitcrab wrote:
| That is a possibility, thanks.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| He always makes great content, I love it.
| macleginn wrote:
| Blood cells are huge!
| arunc wrote:
| It was great until Sea snail appeared in inches. Transitioning
| from micrometer/milliliter to inches is _pretty rough_
| Mogzol wrote:
| For me it appears in millimetres, but I'm in Canada not the US.
| I'm guessing the default is chosen based on your browser's
| language. You can change the units in the top right.
|
| Edit: I checked the page's code and it does indeed set the
| units based on language. If your language is "en-US" you get
| imperial by default, everyone else gets metric.
| susiecambria wrote:
| Sorry to say that my first reaction was that this is heresy. . .
| all this talk of _science_ is a hoax.
|
| But then the music calmed me right down and I wended my way
| through, not understanding 99% of what I saw but in awe of nature
| and Neal's art nonetheless.
| yunnpp wrote:
| Did you just escape from a religious sect living inside an
| underwater cavern or something?
| talksik wrote:
| beautiful soundscapes
| nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote:
| I am sure everyone has their own mind blown moment, and for me it
| was there being an animal about the size of a red blood cell.
| spydr wrote:
| The Japanese spider crab being the same size as a tiger shocked
| me.
| varispeed wrote:
| What made the DNA?
| ptak wrote:
| Illustrations are fantastic
| ge96 wrote:
| looks like they don't show up with an adblocker
| psikomanjak wrote:
| amazing job
| bariswheel wrote:
| The music is so moving, tear inducing. One of the best links I've
| seen posted here and I've been here 15+ years. Well done Neal. I
| wish credit was given to the music, anyone know who created it?
| hypertexthero wrote:
| The following from clicking on the i on the top-right after
| starting the show:
|
| > Created by Neal Agarwal
|
| > Illustrations by Julius Csotonyi
|
| > Production by Liz Ryan
|
| > Music & SFX by Aleix Ramon
|
| > Cello performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga
|
| Beautiful work.
| gizmo385 wrote:
| If you click the "i" info button in the top right, it'll list
| the full credits, including those who worked on the music.
| hashstring wrote:
| So many loving comments, I have nothing more to add to them, and
| nothing to subtract from them.
| kreelman wrote:
| So wonderful. Thanks for making this so open. I'll show it to my
| kids. The artwork is very good and the soundtrack too.
| danielfalbo wrote:
| For comparison: ASML machines print chips with precision up to
| 2nm.
|
| https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems/twi...
| ag8 wrote:
| Not 13?
| jfarlow wrote:
| And the atoms in the proteins and DNA that are exactly
| replicated to the atom each have a feature sizes resolved at
| fractions of a nanometer in 3 dimensions (and likely in
| time/dynamics too).
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I didn't know tardigrades can be big enough to be seen with the
| naked eye. Apparently big enough to be seen but not big enough to
| be recognised without magnification.
| njarboe wrote:
| Fun to see the Jerboa. I recently read a family history written
| by my uncle and he believes this is the source of our family
| name.
| cantalopes wrote:
| Why would th3 website switch from metric to usa units out of
| nowhere m
| higgins wrote:
| where is Solaris?
| thymine_dimer wrote:
| (Uninsightful comment but I'm gonna put it here anyway) The US
| spelling of haemoglobin is all kinds of wrong. Love the site.
| Would love some algae in there though. Perhaps a desmid or
| diatom?
| nickvec wrote:
| Always a joy to see neal.fun on the HN front page.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| >Music & SFX by Aleix Ramon >Cello performance by Iratxe
| Ibaibarriaga
|
| Got a link to the music?
| p2detar wrote:
| I'm pleasantly surprised that Tyrannosaurus rex's tiny hands were
| depicted so accurately. As far as I recall, scientists are still
| puzzled about why it even had hands. Apparently, they were too
| small to be useful for anything, not even scratching its face.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| This has DNA as the smallest object and has a large protein next
| to it, so it misses the fact that a gene's DNA is almost always
| larger by weight and volume than the protein it encodes.
| g_host56 wrote:
| Beautiful website, love that it's using vue.
| darepublic wrote:
| this has more of an indie gem feel compared to the blockbuster
| that was stimulation clicker. as others have mentioned it reminds
| me of scale of the universe flash animation. I think borrowing
| some ideas from that, including zooming in and out rather than
| side to side, could have benefits here.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| CGP Grey does a similar video -- spanning the sizes of our entire
| observable universe -- called "Metric Paper" [0]
|
| [0] https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=pUF5esTscZI
|
| Even if you've never taken a mild psychedelic, this video hits in
| a similar manner (as sober metaphor).
|
| ----
|
| I still drive with Neal.fun's Internet Roadtrip (same OP link
| author), every time I'm out in my workshop.
| kec wrote:
| These are all riffs on "Powers of 10", a film made in the 70's
| for IBM by Charles and Ray Eames:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
| takira wrote:
| Did a great job keeping the scale jumps fresh. Every step had a
| little twist instead of just a commonly known larger animal on
| the next slide. Wild that the Japanese spider crab is basically
| the same size as an orangutan.
| vinhnx wrote:
| > Human: A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that
| was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create
| websites.
|
| Thanks for the laugh!
| ronbenton wrote:
| Going to make this my LinkedIn headline
| buyTheDip wrote:
| That was fun, neal.fun.
| the-mitr wrote:
| One of the books that got me introduced to this fascinating
| aspect of our natural world is John Tyler Bonner's Size and
| Cycle. It has features amazing log-log plots of how different
| organisms from grow with time: from eggs to full-grown organisms.
| This kind of visualisation gives you a different perspective on
| growth and scale
|
| For example, Sequoia gigantea Sequoia is the largest tree and can
| be effectively compared to the annual plant shown above.
| Fertilization and the early growth to the seed stage are
| essentially similar, but because of the cambium and the
| possibility of secondary thickening, the size of the tree can
| increase enormously. As can be seen from Figure 1 in the text,
| the sequoia does not begin to set seed until it is sixty years
| old and eighty meters tall.
|
| https://postimg.cc/hfdGGJ8H
| kretaceous wrote:
| Interesting things from this:
|
| - Smallest animal: Myxobolus Shekel. Smaller than a WBC at 10
| micrometeres.
|
| - Biggest butterfly: Queen Alexandra's Birdwing. Bigger than
| human brain at 18cm.
|
| - Largest insect to ever live: Meganeura (283 MYA). At 40cm long,
| a dragonfly larger than a house cat.
|
| - Rafflesias are larger than German Shepherds
|
| - Earth's largest crab: Japanese Spider Crab. 1m, legs pan of
| 3.75m. More than half the size of a human.
|
| - Always thought Mososaurs were largest animal to ever live but
| it's the Blue whale at 26m. I don't think I ever appreciated how
| unfathomably huge they are. (The largest Mosasaur found was 13m.
| There's a speculated size of 17m as well.)
|
| - World's largest living tree: Hyperion - a giant redwood in
| california at 115m.
|
| Love seeing something so polished and inspiring. Amazing
| illustrations and even better music.
|
| Thanks Neal for these projects!
| manlymuppet wrote:
| The music is phenomenal. Really, really phenomenal.
| utopcell wrote:
| nicely done.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Onl missing a Wikipedia link on each page!
| baalimago wrote:
| Why not "microinches" while you're at it?
| klaushougesen1 wrote:
| !! super nice thanks !
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| Is banana a life? If yes, then hundreds of other lives are not
| included in this project.
|
| A simple idea but fabulous execution!
| vrighter wrote:
| awesome that there was a banana for scale!
| bicepjai wrote:
| Great webapp. There is a similar app that I love to scroll
| through from time to time. Its free and needs no internet
| connection. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/universe-in-a-
| nutshell/id15263... The range of size in the universe, from the
| tiniest particles to the epic galaxies - we take you on a journey
| of size that lets you explore it all with a single swipe.
| Simplita wrote:
| Crazy how something so simple hits so hard. Always wild to see
| how much meaning people can pack into a minimal format.
| Evidlo wrote:
| The people on the page look really scary with DarkReader enabled.
| oscord wrote:
| Why not the super cluster?
| gauravbluepi wrote:
| Like all of your projects....thank you for sharing
| bobnarizes wrote:
| HUMAN
|
| A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a
| nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites. :)
| filo404 wrote:
| This is what the web should be
| maelito wrote:
| The first page looks like a book. It's awesome. Thanks, so
| refreshing. No fucking inhuman cookie banner.
| k__ wrote:
| A week ago, I learned that animals weren't bigger in the past.
|
| Sure, there were dinosaurs that were quite big, but they weren't
| living all at the same time. So there was maybe a big one, that
| died out, and the next big one would evolve much later.
|
| As this project shows, the biggest animals and plants are living
| right now.
|
| Also, we're living in the time with the biggest spiders in
| history. Somehow they don't get that big on average. Turns out,
| the high oxygen levels in the past didn't affect arachnid sizes
| as much as insect sizes.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| it seems strange E. Coli can fit 70,000 ribosomes
| tcsenpai wrote:
| I find it amazing, that we can build microprocessors with
| transistors the size of a DNA molecule
| mchinen wrote:
| If you liked the first half of this site and want an extension,
| Cell Biology by the Numbers (2015, Milo, Phillips,
| https://book.bionumbers.org/) is great and has a similar
| intuition-building fun sense about size as well as various other
| measurements, including weight, time and energy at the atomic to
| micro-organism level.
| thunderbong wrote:
| On a desktop screen, you also see a 'Compare To' button which
| puts the current and the compared one beside each other!
| hamiecod wrote:
| It makes me emotional when I think about where life started and
| what it evolved into. Life created so many different types of
| organisms, each having different features while maintaining the
| equilibrium of the planet. From bacteria, to massive dinosaurs,
| to tiny homosapiens who inevitably control the largest organisms.
| 8-prime wrote:
| My main takeaway was that I had no clue how large Krill can get.
| To think that Antarctic Krill is as long as the Bee Hummingbird
| is tall is absurd to me.
| ebastiban wrote:
| You are an artist, a good one .
| dsign wrote:
| Amazing!
|
| I always thought that the best we could do for targeted drug
| delivery was an adenovirus. But after seeing that parasite being
| only slightly bigger than a red blood cell, I think we can do
| better...
| catoc wrote:
| No.fun in the cookie dialogue. Had to click 26 (sic!) switches to
| opt out of being tracked.
| miramba wrote:
| It is encouraging to know that I am not the only one who does
| that (sometimes, on interesting sites. otherwise I just leave).
| catoc wrote:
| I would have definitely left normally. Just wanted to see the
| site.
|
| And I know this also likely not Neil's idea of fun, and
| mostly the silly EU rules that are to blame but still,
| dialogs without a directly available "refuse all" are the
| worst
| kunley wrote:
| Yes, you are not the only one.
| qn9n wrote:
| Honestly I don't really see cookie banners anymore because I
| have a dismiss feature built into my ad blocker.
| catoc wrote:
| Always afraid that auto dismiss results in auto allow-all on
| thus type of dialog.
| N-Krause wrote:
| uBlock seemed to have handled it for me.
| kunley wrote:
| Not on mobile..
| gl-prod wrote:
| Firefox on mobile can install ublock
| fortyseven wrote:
| On Firefox mobile with unblock, here. Experienced nothing
| intrusive. It works, apparently. :)
| anoplus wrote:
| So many new facts to learn and I like how popular a post about
| the natural world is here
| bilsbie wrote:
| You're telling me a white blood cell is only ten times longer
| than mitochondria?
|
| How is that possible? Doesn't it contain at least thousands?
| solarized wrote:
| All hail web based apps!
|
| We really dont need playStore and appStore to run beautiful
| things like this.
| 01-_- wrote:
| Wow! That's very interesting.
| XCSme wrote:
| Neurons are huge
| AleixR wrote:
| Hi all! I'm Aleix Ramon, the music composer of the soundtrack.
|
| Since some of you asked, here's the soundtrack on Bandcamp:
| https://aleixramon.bandcamp.com/album/size-of-life-original-...
|
| There you can download it in high quality, and it's a pay-what-
| you-want: you can get it for free if you want, or pay what you
| feel like and support me. Either way, I'm happy that you enjoy
| it!
|
| The music should also be on Spotify, Apple Music, and most music
| streaming services within the next 24h.
|
| A bit about the process of scoring Size of Life:
|
| I've worked with Neal before on a couple of his other games,
| including Absurd Trolley Problems, so we were used to working
| together (and with his producer--you're awesome, Liz!). When Neal
| told me about Size of Life, we had an inspiring conversation
| about how the music could make the players feel.
|
| The core idea was that it should enhance that feeling of wondrous
| discovery, but subtly, without taking the attention away from the
| beautiful illustrations.
|
| I also thought it should reflect the organisms' increasing size--
| as some of you pointed out, the music grows with them. I think of
| it as a single instrument that builds upon itself, like the cells
| in an increasingly complex organism. So I composed 12 layers that
| loop indefinitely--as you progress, each layer is added, and as
| you go back, they're subtracted. The effect is most clear if you
| get to the end and then return to the smaller organisms!
|
| Since the game has an encyclopedia vibe to it, I proposed to go
| with a string instrument to give it a subtle "Enlightenment-era"
| and "cultural" feel. I was suspecting the cello could be a good
| instrument because of its range and expressivity.
|
| Coincidentally, the next week I met the cellist Iratxe
| Ibaibarriaga at a game conference in Barcelona, where I'm based,
| and she immediately became the ideal person for it. She's done a
| wonderful job bringing a ton of expressivity to the playing, and
| it's been a delight to work with her.
|
| I got very excited when Neal told me he was making an educational
| game--I come from a family of school teachers. I've been scoring
| games for over 10 years, but this is the first educational game
| I've scored.
|
| In a way, now the circle feels complete!
|
| (if anyone wants to reach out, feel free to do so! You can find
| me and all my stuff here: https://www.aleixramon.com/ )
| js8 wrote:
| I would like to play an open world game (like Minecraft) where 1
| in-game meter equals 1 micrometer in the real world. That way,
| one could get a feeling about the scale of things.
| mncharity wrote:
| Hmm, perhaps with flying? When stuck on the ground, people's
| feel for size gets poorer as things get bigger (tall buildings,
| clouds, map distances). I think of having 4ish orders of
| magnitude available for visual reference in a classroom (cm to
| 10 m), plus less robustly 100 m and km in AR. At that
| micrometer per meter, a grain of salt towers over a city
| skyline - "nano view" in [1] (eep - a decade ago now - I was
| about to take another pass at it as covid hit).
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221007220513/http://www.clarif...
| chakintosh wrote:
| > Human A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was
| once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create
| websites.
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| Great visualization! It would have been nice to zoom out to a
| view of the world from space at the end, since this is really the
| max size of life as we know it (n=1 so far).
| Zak wrote:
| Never before have I seen the message "Firefox has been terminated
| by the Linux kernel because the system is low on memory". Thanks
| for a new experience!
|
| I do like the visualization.
| its_ethan wrote:
| Maybe it's a stupid question, but how does the poliovirus "work"?
| Like at this scale, the DNA strand is still pretty visible and a
| decent-ish percentage of the polio virus in size.. is it just a
| ball with DNA inside and not much else? How does it pack enough
| DNA to replicate itself into it's own size at that scale?
| zxexz wrote:
| You're pretty close actually. It's a single strand of positive-
| sense RNA 7.5kb long, and a protein capsule. +ssRNA is treated
| as mRNA by the host and is directly translated into proteins.
| almog wrote:
| One error I think I spotted: Wooly Mammoth atill lived 4000 years
| ago in Wrangel Island but the the website says it got extinct
| 10,000 years ago.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| This is absolutely incredible. Thank you.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| Nice display, but it starts off with misleading measurements of
| DNA. The spacing between DNA base pairs is 0.34 nm, so the 10
| base pairs pictured are in fact 3.4 nm. But the DNA in a single
| human cell is about 2 meters, and chromosome lengths vary from 2
| to 10 cm. I am skeptical of the hemoglobin vs ribosome sizes as
| well; hemoglobin has a molecular weight of about 60,000, while
| ribosomes weigh more than 5 million.
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