From Planck to Cosmos
A journey across 60 orders of magnitude — from the Planck length to the observable universe. Here, scrolling means zooming, not travelling.
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Planck Length
The theoretical limit of space and time — not a 'pixel' of the universe, but the scale at which our physics falls silent.
Quark / Electron
Point-like: with no measurable size. We know only an upper bound.
Proton / Nucleus
The nucleus holds almost the atom's entire mass — in the tiniest space.
Atom
Almost entirely empty space around a tiny nucleus. If the nucleus were a marble, the shell would lie hundreds of metres away.
DNA Double Helix
The blueprint of all life, just two nanometres wide.
Virus
At the edge of life — too small to see in a light microscope.
Bacterium
Single-celled and ancient — bacteria existed long before all complex life.
Human Cell
The basic unit of your body — you are built from some 37 trillion of them.
Egg Cell
The largest human cell — just barely visible to the naked eye.
Grain of Sand
From here we see with ease. Each grain is a shard of rock millions of years old.
Beetle
Beetles are the most species-rich animal group on Earth.
Frog
A handful of life — the scale of the tangible.
Human
Our scale. From here we look into both infinities.
Blue Whale
The largest animal that has ever lived.
Giant Sequoia
The tallest living things on Earth — some older than two thousand years.
Rock Massif
A kilometre of rising rock — shaped over millions of years.
Mount Everest
The highest point on Earth above the sea.
Large Asteroid
Rubble from the dawn of the solar system.
The Moon
Our natural companion — and the only other ground humans have walked.
Earth
The only place in the universe we know holds life.
Jupiter
The largest planet — over a thousand Earths would fit inside.
The Sun
An average star — yet 99.9% of the solar system's mass.
Earth's Orbit (1 AU)
The Earth–Sun distance. Light takes a good eight minutes to cross it.
Solar System
Out to Neptune's orbit — yet almost only emptiness between the worlds.
Nearest Star
Proxima Centauri, a good four light-years away — the Sun's nearest neighbour.
Orion Nebula
A cradle of new stars, 24 light-years across.
Globular Cluster
Hundreds of thousands of ancient stars, packed into a sphere.
Milky Way
Our galaxy — about 100,000 light-years, hundreds of billions of stars.
Local Group
The Milky Way, Andromeda and dozens of smaller galaxies.
Virgo Cluster
Over a thousand galaxies, bound together by gravity.
Laniakea Supercluster
Our cosmic home — 100,000 galaxies, all streaming inward.
Cosmic Web
Filaments of galaxies around immense voids — the largest structure there is.
Observable Universe
93 billion light-years — all we can ever see. Beyond it: the unknown.
From the smallest thing physics can still grasp to the edge of the visible lie about sixty tenfold steps. The human stands almost exactly in the middle — large enough to count the atoms, small enough to marvel at the galaxies.
Sizes are best published values (proton radius 0.84 fm; atom ~10⁻¹⁰ m; Milky Way ~10²¹ m, uncertain; observable universe 8.8×10²⁶ m). Quarks/electrons are point-like (upper bound only). The Planck length is a theoretical limit, not a smallest distance.