Day 2: A matter of scale
The other day a friend emailed a link to a website called “the scale of everything”. This is a really cool animation which, by using a slider, allows you to zoom from the very smallest thing we know about - quantum foam at a fraction of a yoctometer - right up to the largest thing we know about - the size of the whole universe at a couple of hundred yottometers. Interestingly, on the scale between the very big (yottometers) and the very small (yoctometers), humans lie pretty much slap in the middle. In other words (and something that I find quite mind boggling) the universe is about as much bigger than you are, as you are bigger than the smallest known atomic particle.
Although science has built tools that can examine both the very big and the very small, the sizes involved are so vast that we mostly have to rely on indirect, and somewhat complicated, methods to see what’s out there. This may seem to some people to be a bit of a pointless pursuit, however it suddenly becomes rather a lot more relevant when we realise that the objects that lie beyond our normal comprehension can actually affect our everyday lives quite significantly. For instance, a single radioactive particle could lead to a mutation that causes cancer.
One of the best parts of being a scientist is trying to understand this “other” perspective. I find science exciting because it takes me out of my normal everyday experience and introduces me to a world that is still only partially explored. If I get bored or am feeling unmotivated I regularly go back to the “scale of everything” website because it shows me how little of the world I actually experience, and reminds me that there’s an awful lot more out there than just me!
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