From the YouTube page description:
The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.
I love visualizations like this. Thinking at scales like this is very hard for the human brain to do. Seeing it helps, but the timescales involved in traveling this distance overwhelm even my fairly open mind.
Hat tip to Tom Negrino via twitter.
One of my favorites from years ago, Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, http://www.powersof10.com/index.php?mod=watch_powersof10
When I give talks on deep time, especially for kids at Dakota Ridge (www.dinoridge.org) I use this analogy, for the lifespan of the Earth…it helps kids to grasp deep time, and you are welcome to steal it!
If you stand with your arms outstretched, like a cross, with the distance between middle fingertips representing the ~4.5 billion years of Earth’s entire history, *one* downward swipe of a nail file would *wipe away* all of modern humans’ time on Earth! That equates to ~200,000 years.
Deep time is *still* a concept I struggle with! For example, the Cambrian is generally understood to have begun ~570 million years ago: that stretch of time is ONE EIGHTH of the entire Earth’s lifespan, to date…WOW!!!
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/prehistoric-time-line.html
For a great read, Chuck, get S. J. Gould’s “Wonderful Life.”
Here’s a good tool for visualizing deep space.
http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html
Here’s another one: http://www.wimp.com/starsize/