Powers of Ten — Interactive Scale Explorer

Powers of Ten — Interactive Scale ExplorerJourney from quarks to the observable universe — 41 orders of magnitude.10⁻¹⁵ m — QuarksThe fundamental building blocks of matter. Three quarks are bound together by gluons to form protons and neutrons.10⁻¹⁴ m — Atomic NucleusProtons and neutrons packed into a dense nucleus just femtometers across — 100,000 times smaller than the atom itself.10⁻¹² m — Inner AtomThe space between the nucleus and the electron cloud. This region is almost entirely empty — an atom is mostly nothing.10⁻¹⁰ m — The AtomOne angstrom — the scale of a single atom. Electron probability clouds form the outer boundary.10⁻⁹ m — MoleculesAtoms bonded into molecules. The DNA double helix is about 2 nanometers wide.10⁻⁸ m — VirusesA virus — neither alive nor dead. Just a shell of protein around a strand of genetic code.10⁻⁷ m — Wavelength of LightVisible light has wavelengths between 380 and 700 nanometers.10⁻⁶ m — BacteriaA single bacterium, one micrometer across. Your body hosts trillions of them.10⁻⁵ m — Living CellsA human red blood cell is about 8 micrometers across. Inside: organelles, mitochondria, the entire machinery of life.10⁻⁴ m — Hair & SandA human hair is about 70 micrometers thick. The threshold of what the naked eye can just barely see.10⁻³ m — Millimeter WorldThe head of a pin. A grain of salt. The smallest features your fingers can feel.10⁻² m — A FingertipOne centimeter — the width of a fingertip. You can see the whorls of a fingerprint.10⁻¹ m — A Human HandTen centimeters — the span of a hand. The scale at which we interact with the world.10⁰ m — A PersonOne meter. A human being. You are here — the measure of all things.10¹ m — A Picnic in the ParkTen meters. A couple on a blanket in the park. Trees, grass, the warmth of an autumn afternoon in Chicago.10² m — A City BlockOne hundred meters. Roads, buildings, parked cars. The scale of daily life.10³ m — A NeighborhoodOne kilometer. The grid of streets becomes visible. The skeleton of a city emerges.10⁴ m — The CityTen kilometers. An entire city — its downtown core, suburbs, and the surrounding countryside.10⁵ m — A RegionOne hundred kilometers. Lake Michigan's shoreline curves away. Geography at the regional scale.10⁶ m — A ContinentOne thousand kilometers. The Great Lakes, the curve of the coastline. Earth begins to look like a planet.10⁷ m — Earth from SpaceTen thousand kilometers — the diameter of the Earth. The blue marble. Home to eight billion people.10⁸ m — Earth–Moon SystemThe Moon orbits at 384,000 km. The farthest any human has traveled.10¹⁰ m — Inner Solar SystemThe orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars — rocky worlds circling an ordinary yellow star.10¹² m — The Solar SystemJupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune — gas giants in the cold outer reaches.10¹⁴ m — The Oort CloudAbout one light-year. A shell of icy debris marking the gravitational edge of our solar system.10¹⁶ m — Nearby StarsAlpha Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor, is 4.37 light-years away.10¹⁸ m — Stellar NeighborhoodOne hundred light-years. A few hundred stars. Familiar constellations dissolve.10²⁰ m — The Milky WayOur galaxy — a barred spiral of 200–400 billion stars, 100,000 light-years across.10²² m — The Local GroupThe Milky Way, Andromeda, and about 80 smaller galaxies bound together by gravity.10²⁴ m — Galaxy SuperclusterSuperclusters — galaxies cluster into filaments and walls separated by immense voids. The cosmic web.10²⁶ m — The Observable UniverseThe cosmic horizon — 93 billion light-years across. Every photon that has had time to reach us since the Big Bang.

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