VFX Artist Reveals the True Scale of the Universe

have you seen those videos that show the scale of our universe they're pretty neat because they demonstrate just how much larger other stars in our galaxy are then our own Sun however my problem with these videos is that we quickly lose context of scale because as each new star is introduced they appear visually the same as the one before it so we're just kind of left thinking yeah I guess we're pretty tiny in the scale of the universe but I want to know just how tiny we are so instead of using a scale that changes in this video it's gonna be locked and just like you can have miniature scaled models our scale is 1 to 190 million that shrinks the universe down to a point where the earth is the size of a tennis ball and that makes the moon the size of a Nerf ball now ask yourself this question how far away would they be from each other elbows bent just a little bit here right here I'll tightly lock it because it took the astronauts three days that'll do they're here actually our little moon would be all the way over here seven feet away the real moon sits 250,000 miles from the earth at its furthest point in orbit and here's a fun fact if you were to line up each planet in the solar system right next to each other they could actually fit between the earth in the moon next earth we would put Mercury Venus and Mars and then expand outwards to Jupiter followed by Saturn and then Uranus and Neptune and you can even throw a little Pluto in here for good measure this is just crazy that they actually fit there and if you want to read more about this crazy cosmic coincidence I've linked a really interesting article by astronomer Hill plait as you can see even at the scale Jupiter is pretty big you could fit 1,300 Earth's within the volume of Jupiter but that is nothing compared to the Sun and for that we have to go outside now at this scale the Sun would be half a mile away so for simplicity sake I'm just gonna put the Sun right here Oh God so bright okay let's not actually simulate the brightness - let's bring that down okay that's better at this scale the Sun would be 24 feet wide which is over half the width of this whole street in fact it's so big the Sun could fit 1.3 million Earth's inside of it that's pretty crazy now our Sun is actually larger than most stars as a yellow dwarf it's bigger than 80% of the stars in the entire universe most stars are red dwarfs and they're about half the size of our Sun but even if the Sun is above average size it's certainly not the biggest let's look at Sirius no not Sirius Black that's serious it is the brightest star in the night sky because it is only eight and a half light-years away combined with the fact that it is 20 times brighter than our Sun you can even see Sirius in most light polluted cities now a quick side note about these comparisons I'm simply focusing on the diameters of each of these stars and that doesn't necessarily correlate to how much mass the star has or how bright they appear because some of these stars have ballooned to such a huge volume that they appear absolutely massive like Arcturus Arcturus is 26 times larger than our Sun yet it isn't even twice as heavy at our tennis ball scale it is 610 feet wide which is about the length of two football fields what is interesting about Arcturus is that it is flying in a different direction from all the other stars in our galaxy and therefore it is hypothesized that it was actually formed in another galaxy that at some point in the last several billion years was eaten up by our own Milky Way zooming out we get Rigel which would be so large it'd be taller than New York City's Freedom Tower at 1872 feet tall that's pretty big but even though it's so large it's actually a tiny little baby star and I actually mean that literally it's only eight million years old compared to our Sun which is four-and-a-half billion years old that is the difference between a 100 year old person in a two month old baby except this baby is destined to explode in a supernova not all stars go supernova though our own Sun for instance is going to continue expanding until it's over a mile wide at our scale over the course of the next five billion years it will turn into a red giant 256 times bigger than it is right now hey hey no need to worry though because only in about 1 billion years are we gonna lose all of our oceans thanks to the fact that they're going to boil away but here's a star that even puts that to shame [Music] this star boasts a waistline that is over a billion miles wide your mama ain't got nothing on this with earth as a tennis ball Betelgeuse which stretch over five miles end-to-end it would be ten times taller than the tallest building in the world the Burj Khalifa in Dubai it is however considered to be really close to the end of its life and is very likely to go supernova within a million years and when it does the explosion will be so bright it'll outshine the full moon and may last as long as a month but Betelgeuse is not the largest star that we found that honor lies with us scooti what kind of a name is UI scooty astronomers think this might even be the largest star in our galaxy and it's certainly the largest one we've ever found if it were to replace our Sun the surface would reach the orbit of Saturn it would dwarf Manhattan at a staggering 8 miles wide eight miles Central Park is only two and a half miles long so this is over three times longer than that to put that into perspective that is higher than the cruising out suit of all airlines these stars are the size of cities and here we are living on a tennis ball do you feel small yet I do [Music] thank you so much for watching this video this is a project I've been wanting to work on for quite some time so I really hope that you've walked away with a better appreciation for the scale of our universe now time for a word from our sponsors us that's right we've been working on some really cool designs such as this one that you can find in our merchandise store link in the description we also have shirts like this it glows in the dark that's pretty crazy and for the first time in years we've brought back the original snapback hat so if you missed out on that the first time we've got you covered and lastly we've got this crazy god of jenk shirt Dobby rendered in the flesh for the first time only a few days left for this one though so act fast and with your support we're able to make videos like this one so I really want to make more so I hope you keep supporting us thank you so much and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Corridor Crew

Views: 6,749,472

Rating: 4.9020238 out of 5

Keywords: corridor crew, spacex, elon musk, scale of the universe, science, planets, stars, big, giant, space travel, scifi, education, smarter every day, vsauce, bill nye, theory, beetlejuice, sirius, uy scuti, The Sun, Rigel, Arcturua, mars, saturn

Id: GCTuirkcRwo

Length: 6min 35sec (395 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 22 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/shapinglight]

That was so much easier to comprehend than the other videos I've seen. Pretty solid explanation.

[u/contrabardus]

There's a VR thing called Titans of Space that does what this video does, only you can actually see the size comparison directly.

Scale is something VR does really well, so it's really impressive to see.

[u/TheSmoothBear]

I hope this video does well. Pretty fuckin interesting

[u/MenudoMenudo]

One thing I wish he'd added was the distance between the earth and the sun at that scale. He alluded to it but didn't show it.

[u/Raikupath]

I'm a simple man. I see Corridor I press like

[u/vshawk2]

These guys did it better.

[u/Poopfartplan]

When you wish upon a star, it makes you feel so very small.

[u/Go4Lo]

“Gonna explain space stuff, but first I’mma bust through this door.”