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though the time compression idea to make long timeframes a bit more comprehensible loses its usefulness with ludicrously long timeframes. By the author's own admission, at that point "the difference between “regular” years and Universe years isn’t so big". Chances are you won't find 10^140 much easier to grasp than 10^150.

I'd like to see a logarithmic representation all the way out, sort of a temporal version of Powers of Ten.

I've been interested in all things 'space' since I was a young kid and consider myself reasonably knowledgeable about the universe, galaxies, star systems, etc, but I still get blown away when thinking about the scale of things some times.

One of the main things I try to put across to people when I talk about space, is just how big it is. Sometimes people can't get their head around the numbers, which is quite understandable seeing as we typically don't have much experience dealing with these kind of measurements, so if I have the chance I will point them to the following links containing fantastic visualisations of such scales. They cover the very big and the very small equally well I think, and are simple and engaging enough for kids to follow too.

Powers of Ten - very interesting short video commissioned by IBM back in 1968.

The Scale of The Universe - interactive flash applet that allows you to zoom in and out of the universe (an updated version of one done a year or two back by the same authors).

Relative size of stars and planets - I have no idea who originally made this set of images but they have propogated around the web over the years and this just happens to be first link to it I found in Google results.

If there's one thing in the second and third links that I think will surprise a lot of people, it's how insanely large the biggest stars are compared to our Sun (in diameter, not necessarily in mass).

However the presentation was all animation, moral harangues, and celebrity voiceover, with little content and no interesting astrophysics science. The whole concept seemed like a watered-down ripoff of the powers of ten video I saw in middle school. Remember that? I would much rather have watched that again.

I saw a better version of this on a big screen when I went to Disney World this Christmas vacation; it's running in Innovations in Epcot projected on a 20 foot square screen, part of a "nanoscale devices" exhibit.

It's not quite the Charles & Ray Earnes movie, since it starts out in space at ~10^9 (orbiting earth) then "smoothly" zooms in to ~10^-10 (electron level) ... "smoothly" being a somewhat obvious computerized blend between satelite cameras to normal optics to electron microscope images... but it was at 30 frames a second, not seconds per frame like Florida's java applet.

The original Powers of Ten video (by Charles and Ray Eames) is still the definitive version.

Screencaps Webcast (Real Player)

The original Powers of Ten video (by Charles and Ray Eames) is still the definitive version.

Screencaps Webcast (Real Player)

Powers of Ten
Powersof10.com and Eames Office - Powers of Ten
Quarks to Quasars
`Powers of Ten' scales (additional links)
The book at Amazon, Barnes & Nobel.

Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps, by Kees Boeke (1957)
Cosmic View
Cosmic View (another version)

A Powers of Ten variant (my own)
How Big Are Things? (comments encouraged)
Scaling the universe to your desktop

Other PoT presentations of length
Length
Orders of magnitude - Distance
Scales of Measurement (ASCII version) from Niel Brandt's Timelines and Scales of Measurement Page

- Mitchell Charity

Here's the main website for the book/movie: http://www.powersof10.com

What's really interesting is that the film, made by Ray Eames, was originally commissioned by IBM! Fancy that - IBM, the world's least exciting technology monolith (no pun intended) produces one of the best science films, and best short films, ever made . . . :)

Go you big red fire engine!