They're just trying to scare us.

Don't wanna be 'that guy', but this was really poorly done in my opinion. Way too few interstellar references, the orbit lines made it all too unreal, and the sense of scale I got was way out of whack. Where's the Orion nebula? Where's Andromeda in relation to us? No, we just zoom out and back in and learn nothing. Check me off as disappointed.

*quality! For me, the orbit lines gave me a good sense of the scale.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Ornthoron.

Agrred, Ornthoron, the scale in these things always blows me away. If I could do anything I wanted, one wish granted, it would be to sail through the universe to behold its many wonders.

It's devastatingly beautiful... Who needs a magical bearded man in the sky? WE EXIST... REJOICE IN THIS!?

I liked the part where we were "coming back home" from our intergalactic trip. Really well done IMHO.

We're part of this cosmic ballet... can you believe how lucky we all are? And we waste our time on stage chasing green pieces of paper, and hating our fellow dancers..

Holy crap that was amazing... Great sift!

I thought the Earth with its artificial satellite's orbits drawn around it looked like an atom.

Yeah. We know what god is. Yep.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

The orbit lines were absolutely necessary, because they were doing everything to exact scale- without them we would be looking at just blackness for long periods of the animation.

>> ^laura:
I thought the Earth with its artificial satellite's orbits drawn around it looked like an atom.


I suppose you don't know what an atom looks like, then. ;-)

Video demands to be watched in high quality on youtube. OBEY THE VIDEO

I know what many atoms look like, from a distance

Two things struck me, the extent of mans first radio signals (can't imagine how weak they would be at that distance) and the areas of the universe we haven't mapped yet. I love that feeling of insignificance, makes you feel all fuzzy insidel

When you think about it though, the first radio signals broadcast would have been very directional at the time, not a sphere at all, instead showing the earth's shadow and spiraling around as the earth rotated and orbited. Not easy to model or represent graphically though. Would love to see how the signals have increased in spectrum and amplitude, you'd see a kind of gas, like our atmosphere, varying density and colour...

Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestia if you liked this.

I feel so...tiny.

Fantastic stuff, *promote.

I was taken aback when it was zooming back in, hoping to recognize something familiar on the way back to earth, and how ridiculously tiny we are.

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, December 17th, 2009 8:02pm PST - promote requested by Tymbrwulf.

>> ^Enzoblue:
Don't wanna be 'that guy', but this was really poorly done in my opinion. Way too few interstellar references, the orbit lines made it all too unreal, and the sense of scale I got was way out of whack. Where's the Orion nebula? Where's Andromeda in relation to us? No, we just zoom out and back in and learn nothing. Check me off as disappointed.


Agreed. Plus: It gives the wrong impression the universe is spherical.

I've very close-minded. I'm probably content to never set foot outside of my own galaxy.

Here's the old-school version
http://www.videosift.com/video/IBM-Powers-Of-Ten-amazing-9-minute-science-video
And a happy Monty Python version
http://www.videosift.com/video/Powers-Of-Ten-Galaxy-Song

A human life is not long enough to truly explore the spec of dust we inhabit. At ANY speed, real or fantastic, looking around just the small chunk of spiral arm we're in would take 1000s of lifetimes.