Cool, but a little more thought on the content rather than the presentation would improve it. For example starting with an arbitrary segment of DNA double helix and saying how &quot;tall&quot; this arbitrary segment is, is just silly.Instead, it should show how _wide_ it is. And for extra coolness, keep it in frame, coiling longer and longer as you go, and eventually have the same strand, which has been with us all the time, as a specific example (e.g. human chromosome 7 or some such) by _length_

double clicking makes the animation jitter. ive had to deal with matching derivatives of smooth slopes in rendering as well. the animation seems to be finite time (and so variable velocity) and mashing click is just updating the final point without matching the current derivative.

It&#x27;s not sticking straight up from the ground in Kansas. Hyperion has many siblings nearby and is on rocky terrain which conceals its overall height.

There are a lot of 300 foot trees in the general vicinity, so you&#x27;d need to actually measure to be precisely sure

It is literally a secret. The location cannot easily be found with Google. Go ahead, try and find it.

were you able to? I wasn&#x27;t<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;famousredwoods.com&#x2F;hyperion&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;famousredwoods.com&#x2F;hyperion&#x2F;</a>Nevermind!

It isn&#x27;t a secret.  The location can easily be found if you Google it.

From Wikipedia:&quot;The exact location of Hyperion is nominally secret but is available via internet search.[12] However, in July 2022, the Redwood Park superintendent closed the entire area around the tree, citing &quot;devastation of the habitat surrounding Hyperion&quot; caused by visitors. Its base was trampled by the overuse and as a result ferns no longer grow around the tree.[13]Measures to protect the Hyperion tree were officially implemented in 2022 when the National Park Service (NPS) closed public access to its location in Redwood National Park.[14][15] Anyone who gets too close could face up to six months in jail and a $5,000 maximum fine.[13][16][17]&quot;

I don&#x27;t understand how the location of a 377 foot tall tree could be kept secret. Wouldn&#x27;t that type of thing be visible in satellite imagery at the very least?

It is not right to call the xenophyophore that is on the last row, and which can have a size of up to 20 cm as an &quot;amoeba&quot;.Only the next row above it, with Pelomyxa, is indeed an amoeba and one that is very frequently encountered and which usually has sizes not much less than 1 millimeter and sometimes it can reach a size of a few mm.The true amoebas are much more closely related to humans, than to xenophyophores (giant marine unicellular living beings) or to plants.Besides the true amoebas there are also a few other kinds of unicellular eukaryotes with shape-shifting cells, e.g. foraminifera, radiolarians and others, but already in the first half of the 19th century it was recognized that those other groups change their shapes in a different way than the amoebas, so they were classified separately, even if the term &quot;amoeboid cell&quot; has always been used about any cell with variable shape.The true amoebas are related to the group formed by animals and fungi, and there are some amoebas that have a simple form of multicellularity, so it is likely that some of the mechanisms needed for the evolution of multicellularity have been inherited from a common ancestor of animals, fungi and amoebae.The multicellular or multinucleate amoebae that belong to Myxomycetes (one of the kinds of slime moulds) can reach much bigger sizes, e.g. a diameter of up to 1 meter, because they do not have the size limitation that exists for simple unicellular eukaryotes.

On the other side, wasps could be so tiny. like you could put thousands of them inside an amoeba volume.&quot;Megaphragma mymaripenne is a microscopically sized wasp. At 200 μm in length, it is the third-smallest extant insect, comparable in size to single-celled organisms. It has a highly reduced nervous system, containing only 7400 neurons, several orders of magnitude fewer than in larger insects.&quot;

I got surprised by that too, and while comparing its size to the next organism (Tardigrade) I learned that every member of the same species of tardigrades has the exact same number of cells [1], which was even more surprising for me:&gt; Eutelic organisms have a fixed number of somatic cells when they reach maturity, the exact number being relatively constant for any one species. This phenomenon is also referred to as cell constancy. Development proceeds by cell division until maturity; further growth occurs via cell enlargement only.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Eutely" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Eutely</a>

I came to the comments to express surprise that amoebas were so large. It appears they vary wildly in size (as small as 2.3 micrometers... but up to 20 cm, or nearly 8 inches).<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Amoeba#Size_range" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Amoeba#Size_range</a>

I&#x27;m seeing the amoeba as approximately the size of the heel segment of a ladybug&#x27;s leg. I consider lady bugs pretty small in an intuitive sense, their legs quite small and the smallest end segment to be especially small. I think that leaves an amoeba on the fringes of distinguishable perception which seems right to me, unless I&#x27;m overestimating their size.

Actually the tardigrade used as an example is quite big at 500 micrometers.Most tardigrades are not much bigger than 100 micrometers.Tardigrades, together with nematodes, rotifers, mites and a few more rarely encountered groups are among the smallest animals and they are smaller than many of the bigger among the unicellular eukaryotes. That is why they have been discovered only after the invention of the microscope.The tardigrades have evolved towards smaller and smaller sizes very early, already during the Cambrian. It is interesting that they are segmented animals, like their relatives the arthropods and the velvet worms, but they have very few segments, because in order to achieve such a small size they have lost all intermediate segments, so the segments that now form their body were originally the segments of the head, and now they are followed immediately by the original segments of the tail, without the original body that connected the head to the tail. Thus they have been miniaturized by losing their body and becoming a walking head (the legs of the tardigrades are what in arthropods have become appendages of the mouth, e.g. mandibles and maxillae).

The tardigrade vs. ladybug gave me pause. So a tardigrade is about the side of a ladybugs eye?

But if scales were perfectly respected, how could you see both a neuron and a human on the screen?

I found that jarring as well. There&#x27;s a toggle in the upper right to switch to metric.Even with setting it to metric, it progresses through units based on the scale. I realize that scientists love to work in scientific notation, and progressing from nanometers to micrometers, mm, cm, and finally meters sort of follows that kind of logic. I wonder how it would feel if the whole thing was in constant units or at least there was an option for that.

Cool visualization, but I also noticed the switch from SI units to imperial. From micrometers to inches, which was jarring and hard for me to compare.I&#x27;d suggest keeping the SI unit , or at least having both once we get to the level of inches.

The T-rex appears taller than the giraffe, but it isn&#x27;t and the scale in the website itself shows it.

It seems to be like some of the scales slightly off?If you are looking at the ladybird (ladybug) with the amoeba to the left, the amoeba isn&#x27;t an order of the magnitude smaller - it would actually be visible by the human eye (bigger than a grain of sand)? Indeed, the amoeba seems the same size as the ladybird&#x27;s foot?Similarly, this makes the bumblebee appear smaller than a human finger (the in the adjacent picture), which isn&#x27;t the case?

&gt; A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites

There&#x27;s no way a tardigrade is half a sea snail.

Some of your neurons stretch from your brain to your big toe. 1.5m, or more in a tall person.

You can change the units in the top corner. It defaults to metric for me, but if your browser language is &quot;en-US&quot; you get imperial by default.

I like it, but the switch from metric to inches is confusing, and I think introduces a bug - there&#x27;s no way a sea snail is 5-6 neurons high.

the slinding at some point made me wonder what if i was playing Tinder

Wonderful. The music, illustrations, and sliding sound effect reminded me of the game Braid.

This was awesome! Also, I couldn&#x27;t stop my child brain from anticipating &quot;your mom&quot; at the end.

This is super infuriating. I wish there was a way to offshore the effort and work needed to toggle each option off to the culprit website. 
Perhaps when website A presents you with such hostile prompts, take their contact email, and subscribe it with automation to each of the vendors. I&#x27;m just too tired of this shit.

It&#x27;s only 141 TCF vendor(s) and 69 ad partner(s), with no way to reject all, and you have to manually click on every &quot;vendor&quot; to remove consent.It&#x27;s the second or third time I see this &quot;managed by Google compliant with IAB&quot; (note: not with GDPR)

I like the stuff un the sute but the number if partners and affiliates in the consent window is very off putting.

If I could download the LLM clone, and share it, I think I&#x27;d prefer it. This is just a website that could at any moment disappear, it isn&#x27;t like a book.

I think you&#x27;d notice a pretty big difference in an LLM clone of this site.  The art, music, and other small wouldn&#x27;t be as consistent or hang together as nicely.

I wish Neal would do behind the scenes, how he built this art. I wonder whether LLM assistants like Claude Code make such an interactive show more feasible.He previously did a game &quot;Infinite Craft&quot; which leveraged Llama models. However, I was only able to find an outdated blog from 2019.

Reminds me of the video game Everything. Its a really cool game where you explore the various scales of the universe. It has its quirks (somewhat phoned in graphics like animals walking) but the concept and execution are great IMO, would love a sequel. Also bonus points for featuring Alan watts as a core character.

No, Michael Crichton did: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Deinonychus#Cultural_significance" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Deinonychus#Cultural_significa...</a>

Spielberg took a Deinonychus and called it a Velociraptor because it sounded cooler.

The visual scale seems off, especially on the smaller end of things. Also, are Velociraptors really that small? Jurassic Park lied to me.

Makes a good profile description on certain websites.

It had to be added:&gt; Tyrannosaurus rex. One of the largest land predators ever, it had teeth the size of a banana

Also: Banana - Although not technically living, it does make for a good size comparison.

&gt; A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.Definitely worthy the scroll!

Are there supposed to be pictures? I passed a human silhouette, but that was it.

Beautiful! I love the human feet always visible in the background! It helps me set perspective.

&gt; Velociraptor
&gt; Smaller than usually depicted, the Velociraptor was actually only about the size of a turkey.This is an interesting fact.

That&#x27;s fresh nightmare fuel all right

Not really bothered by snakes, sharks or spiders. But those things (and cave centipedes) look terrifying.

We&#x27;ve still got this:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Eunice_aphroditois" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Eunice_aphroditois</a>Thankfully they don&#x27;t live on land.

It was a millipede, not a centipede, which probably ate fungi or decaying plants.So it was not a dangerous predator, though it could have been poisonous, like many modern millipedes.

Pretty glad the 9 foot long Arthopleura centipede went extinct 300 million years ago. No one wants to deal with that thing.

..er, a parasitic threat to life and happiness that become an endemic drag on global well being?

as a former virologist, I love the thought that LLMs are the virus of reasoning :)

Viruses are to life as LLMs are to reasoning: they often behave like their category expects but not for the same reasons as the genuine article.

It is always going to be controversial but after discovery of prions - needle shifted to &quot;self-replicating means nothing and viruses are also dead&quot;. Then scientists also found viruses large enough that they get infected with other viruses, and parasitic cells that are missing most parts required for metabolism, so it is getting more fuzzy again.

Not that I&#x27;m qualified to reply, but I think this is debated.  I seem to recall reading in &quot;Immune&quot; by Philipp Dettmer that there is an argument that a virus is analogous to a spore stage of life, and the virus begins &quot;living&quot; when it plants itself inside a cell full of &quot;nutrients&quot;, sheds it&#x27;s skin and begins consuming and replicating.

They do have genes and are subject to natural selection so to say the least they are a clear borderline case.

I was taught in school they were something in between.

You are doing the same classification. It all depends on the definition of what a living being is.

MRS GREN would like to have a word with you :)

Hey, if they originated naturally and interact with the environment and reproduce, they are living beings. Mere human taxonomists can&#x27;t just &quot;classify&quot; away the fact.

From what I remember from undergrad the reason they&#x27;re not life is that they lack their own metabolism, they use the metabolism of host cells. And metabolism needs to be a constant thing, they don&#x27;t have any when outside a cell.

Neal delivers. I recently learned that viruses are not considered living being, but I&#x27;m nevertheless happy they&#x27;re included here because they&#x27;re both relevant and interesting in this context.

Reminds me of the classic Scale of the Universe flash toy by Cary Huang (now available in HTML 5!):<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;htwins.net&#x2F;scale2&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;htwins.net&#x2F;scale2&#x2F;</a>

We are megafauna predators! We’ve wiped them almost all out, which makes it less obvious, but that’s our ecological niche.

If you’re interested to read something on that topic I highly recommend the essay &quot;That&#x27;s About the Size of It&quot; by Isaac Asimov (in his book &quot;View from a Height&quot;).He argues that human perception of animal size is skewed because humans use themselves as a benchmark.He takes a logarithmic approach to illustrate where humans actually fit within the overall scale of the animal kingdom. We are way larger than we think we are!

Somewhat related!<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;XRdh8gmVR90?si=PvgoXrgjV62tsUy6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;XRdh8gmVR90?si=PvgoXrgjV62tsUy6</a>

There is another visualization from the same author, that starts at an astronaut and ends with the observable universe <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neal.fun&#x2F;size-of-space&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neal.fun&#x2F;size-of-space&#x2F;</a>

Reminds me of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scaleofuniverse.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scaleofuniverse.com</a> . I think confining it to just living things removes the perspective of &quot;Wow, we&#x27;re really small compared to the rest of the universe&quot;.

An obvious benefit of &quot;humans adapting to create websites&quot;!

Deep Sea one is scary for some reason. It just gives me shivers to think about how deep the sea is, and what horrors lurk down there. I know that I&#x27;ll never encounter such a being, but still kinda creepy.

He was also responsible for one of the worst web pages ever created: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neal.fun&#x2F;stimulation-clicker&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neal.fun&#x2F;stimulation-clicker&#x2F;</a>(It&#x27;s utterly brilliant but monstrous.)

I love Neal&#x27;s work so much. He&#x27;s constantly making some of the coolest stuff on the web. I&#x27;m utterly delighted every time I see his domain on the front page of HN.I hope he never stops making these art pieces - everything he creates brings joy, regardless of whether it&#x27;s educational or funny or whimsical. I&#x27;m in awe of his creative output, his manner of communication, and his ability to steal hours of our time playing ridiculous little games that make us question the fundamentals of life and society.He&#x27;s right up there with XKCD in my mind.--This is probably the only time I&#x27;ll use my super pedantic mode on Neal&#x27;s work, and it&#x27;s only because I love biology -&gt; DNA&gt; The genetic instructions for life&gt; 3.5 nanometers tallDNA has a lot of dimensional metrics. It gets complicated. The people that study this stuff really care because it&#x27;s essential for how our enzymes work, and small differences in spacing tolerances would totally break all of the machinery.This &quot;3.5 nm&quot; figure is roughly the height of one turn of the helix for one form of DNA (B-DNA). The figure is showing multiple turns in the cartoon illustration.In theory, you could create a polymer of infinite length (or height).B-DNA is 34 Å per turn, with 10.5 bp per turn (table 1) :<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;books&#x2F;NBK6545&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;books&#x2F;NBK6545&#x2F;</a>&gt; Blue Whale&gt; King of the animal kingdom, it is the largest animal to have ever lived. It can eat up to 40 million krill per day during peak feeding season.Please fix this one, Neal! We don&#x27;t know that the blue whale is the largest animal to have ever lived (even assuming we know we&#x27;re just talking about earth).Blue whales are perhaps the largest animal to have ever lived on earth. But we simply do not know. The fossil record is woefully incomplete.We even have new papers coming up all the time that challenge this:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.science.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;article&#x2F;whale-whale-may-be-biggest-animal-ever" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.science.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;article&#x2F;whale-whale-may-be-b...</a>Then refutations:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.science.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;article&#x2F;have-blue-whales-regained-their-claim-being-biggest-animals-ever" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.science.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;article&#x2F;have-blue-whales-reg...</a>This is undoubtedly the last time the claim to largest will ever be challenged. Even if we dug up no new fossils, the estimations of previous finds change all the time as we learn more.Also - what does &quot;largest&quot; mean? Mass? Length? Surface area?It&#x27;s okay to say that they&#x27;re the largest (by some metric) that we know of. But it is not correct to say that they&#x27;re the largest to have ever lived - at least as far as we know or could ever know. And by setting an absolute, inquiring minds memorize the point and stop wondering.It&#x27;s very probable that we&#x27;ll never know the definitive answer to this.

He has many other cool visualizations!Space Elevator: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=45640226">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=45640226</a>Deep Sea: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21850527">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21850527</a>

You really can&#x27;t go wrong with any of Neal&#x27;s fun projects!

Beautiful. It&#x27;s clearly a labor of love.The authors deserve our support. Buy them a coffee via the provided link.Thank you for sharing this on HN.

Absolutely loved that the intensity of the music is synced with the swiping. Fantastic job as always!

Very beautiful. Love this.If it helps, AFAIK (I do atomic force microscopy of DNA), DNA&#x27;s height is closer to 2nm than 4.

Minor thing that bothers me is that I can&#x27;t scroll through the things like in the deep sea or space elevator.

The arcade classic Space Invaders had a primitive soundscape in that every time the remaining invaders advance, it plays a short bass note. As fewer and fewer invaders remain, it takes less time for them to advance, and the note repeats faster and faster, it adds a remarkable amount of increasing tension as each level progresses.So not exactly the same, but perhaps prototypical. I think Asteroids did as well.

Man I played Operation Neptune a lot when I was a kid. I wonder if it was the first game to do this style of adaptive music layering. It predates the iMUSE system used in LucasArts games like X-Wing and TIE Fighter.For anyone curious, you can actually play it here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;msdos_Super_Solvers_Operation_Neptune_1990" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.org&#x2F;details&#x2F;msdos_Super_Solvers_Operation_Ne...</a>

From the author on twitter[1] &quot;The background music is a cello performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga and composed by Aleix Ramon&quot;
[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;nealagarwal&#x2F;status&#x2F;1998788695449808920" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;nealagarwal&#x2F;status&#x2F;1998788695449808920</a>

I absolutely loved that looping music track, please authors make it available.

From the author on twitter[1] &quot;The background music is a cello performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga and composed by Aleix Ramon&quot;[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;nealagarwal&#x2F;status&#x2F;1998788695449808920" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;x.com&#x2F;nealagarwal&#x2F;status&#x2F;1998788695449808920</a>

Glad you enjoyed it! You can get the soundtrack on Bandcamp: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aleixramon.bandcamp.com&#x2F;album&#x2F;size-of-life-original-soundtrack" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aleixramon.bandcamp.com&#x2F;album&#x2F;size-of-life-original-...</a>Tomorrow it should also be on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.

The music was breathtaking here - I&#x27;d absolutely pay for a version of it. Really solidified the experience

I love how the music swells and becomes more intricate as life expands and grows more complicated.

Anyone find an actual link for the finished track? Credits are mentioned on his site and twitter but I didn&#x27;t find it anywhere when searching for the artist names.

Thank you for sharing this, I played Operation Neptune as a kid and never noticed the dynamic music!

The rest of the author&#x27;s website is a bunch of games, so I&#x27;d say so.

Hi there, I&#x27;m the composer—I do! 99% of my work is making music and sound effects for games.And you&#x27;re right, the music following the player&#x27;s actions is common in games; we call it &quot;adaptive music.

This is something you do when scoring a game too, wonder if the author ever worked on game programming.

So I guess Operation Neptune was the inspiration for UFO 50s Porgy?<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ufo50.miraheze.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Porgy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ufo50.miraheze.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Porgy</a>

It truly is, thanks for pointing it out! I just went through the entire site 5 minutes ago and it didn’t occur to me to grab my headphones and turn sound on first.

Hi there, I&#x27;m the composer of the soundtrack—glad that you enjoyed the music.The idea was to have a single instrument (a cello) that builds upon itself, like the cells in an organism. It starts with a very minimalistic loop, and new layers of music are progressively added as the organisms grow in size.Thanks for sharing Operation Neptune! I didn&#x27;t know about it, but it&#x27;s a great example of early adaptive game music.

The dynamic soundscape is delightful, as it subtly adds instruments and musical texture as you progress. And going back down the scale regresses it to simple again. Smoothly done.It reminded me of Operation Neptune (1991): each level starts with just one channel, probably percussion, and as you progress through the rooms it adds and removes more channels or sometimes switches to a different section of music. It is unfortunately all sharp cuts, no attempts at smoothing or timing instrument entry and exit. A couple of samples: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=S0LNaatyoQk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=S0LNaatyoQk</a> is an hour of gameplay revelling in “the dynamic and sometimes beautiful music of Operation Neptune” using a Roland MT-32 MIDI synthesiser; and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=wPxEdQ4wx9s&amp;list=PL3FC048B134B3D9D8&amp;index=8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=wPxEdQ4wx9s&amp;list=PL3FC048B13...</a> is the PCM files used on some platforms (if you want to compare that track with the MT-32, it starts at 28 minutes).

I&#x27;ve got a sudden strong urge to play Katamari Damacy.

yes indeed, fungi are under-represented here <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Armillaria_ostoyae" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Armillaria_ostoyae</a>

You have seen a tardigrade with the naked eye (without microscope), that&#x27;s as large as a spot on a ladybug?

Do you set aside the tasty-looking ones and wrap it up with a seafood boil?

Because you clearly haven&#x27;t spent enough time closely looking at pond and river water!Our local parks department has several annual events where they ask for volunteers to help perform benthic macroinvertebrate surveys. It basically amounts to meeting up at a local park with a couple people in waders dragging special nets along the bottom, dumping scoops of material into buckets and large, shallow, white trays, and others sitting at picnic tables with spoons, magnifying glasses, and muffin tins sorting out the critters that get caught in the nets.The cool part is that at the end, you can score the creek based on the quantity and types of larvae that you find: Caddisfly, mayfly, and stonefly larvae are very sensitive to factors like runoff from agriculture and road salt, sediment, water oxygenation, and other factors, beetles, crayfish, dragonflies, and scuds are moderately tolerant, while leeches, worms, midges, and flies will grow in anything. Thousands of these surveys happen every year, so you can compare the relative frequency and quantity of various species and determine the relative health of the stream.I don&#x27;t know how many tardigrades you&#x27;ll find just scooping 4-8mm nymphs and larvae by eye, but I&#x27;ve brought my microscope to a couple and put random droplets of water under a cover and slide: there are an astonishing number of tiny critters swimming around at any zoom level.

The spot on the ladybug is black against red, usually (there are many varieties); it&#x27;s very conveniently highlighted. We&#x27;re better at seeing &quot;bold colour on bold colour&quot; than &quot;semi-translucent thing in water&quot;.

Why haven&#x27;t I seen a Tardigrade with my eyeball?
 It seems like they are the size of a spot on a ladybug from the pics.

Beautiful site. Also very pleased to see the mitochondrion being referred to as the powerhouse of the cell, as is law.

The chip is not smaller than 3.5nm; but a component on the chip is that small.

[edited] - It&#x27;s incredible to think that it starts from DNA, is 3.5nm tall and the solid silicon fins in our phone&#x27;s transistor is twice that.

It&#x27;s using the size of the ruler, matching the posture as shown in the image. A few keys over and there&#x27;s a picture of a grizzly bear that says it is 1m or 3&#x27;4&quot; tall. And maybe when it&#x27;s on all fours, that&#x27;s a typical measurement to the shoulders - its arm length, more or less.That&#x27;s much shorter than the human at 1.7m or 5&#x27;7&quot;. From just those numbers, you might think that a human would weigh more than a grizzly or take one in a fight: But when a bear stands on its hind legs, it&#x27;s 2.4m&#x2F;8&#x27; tall and can be 800 lbs, I&#x27;d have put a grizzly way further to the right.

Very cool. I was surprised that orangutans are described as being only 2 feet 9 inches tall, I think most are a bit larger. Maybe when sitting they&#x27;re under 3 feet? From wikipedia:&quot;females typically stand 115 cm (45 in) tall and weigh around 37 kg (82 lb), while adult males stand 137 cm (54 in) tall and weigh 75 kg (165 lb). The tallest orangutan recorded was a 180 cm (71 in).&quot;

if anyone that made this sees this, you made a typo on the Dwarf Lanternshark, its not Columbia, its ColOmbia

Reminds me of the classic &quot;powers of 10&quot; video: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;0fKBhvDjuy0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;0fKBhvDjuy0</a>. Someone ought to remake that but as a gaussian splat reconstruction, so you can freely move the camera as well as zoom.

“Compressible rodent” was not a phrase I thought I’d ever hear but I’m glad I did. Worth the price of a couple of coffees.

cool and artistic app, how did you make this

I don&#x27;t mind at all, your rewrite looks much more elegant. Thanks!

Cannot stand robot code. Thanks for the genuinely cool thing though. I hope you don&#x27;t mind me rewriting, if only for my own satisfaction.<pre><code> {
 const s = window.scroller = {}
 const press = (key, code) =&gt; () =&gt;
 document.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent(&#x27;keydown&#x27;, {
 key: key, keyCode: code,
 which: key, code: code, bubbles: true
 }));
 const step = () =&gt; {
 const div = document.querySelector(&#x27;.animal-name&#x27;)
 const name = div?.textContent.trim()
 if (name === &#x27;Pando Clone&#x27;) s.dir = s.left
 if (name === &#x27;DNA&#x27;) s.dir = s.right
 s.dir()
 }
 s.left = press(37, &#x27;ArrowLeft&#x27;)
 s.right = s.dir = press(39, &#x27;ArrowRight&#x27;)
 s.start = (ms) =&gt; s.ival = setInterval(step, ms)
 s.stop = () =&gt; clearInterval(s.ival)
 }
 scroller.start(5000)</code></pre>

If anyone wants to set this up to auto-run all the way to the right and then all the way back to the left, here is a vibe-coded (sorry) browser console script. Makes a great &quot;screen-saver&quot; if you kick off the script and then put your browser in full screen mode :)<pre><code> (function() {
 let direction = &#x27;right&#x27;; &#x2F;&#x2F; Start by going right
 let intervalId;

 function getCurrentAnimalName() {
 const animalDiv = document.querySelector(&#x27;.animal-name&#x27;);
 return animalDiv ? animalDiv.textContent.trim() : &#x27;&#x27;;
 }

 function pressKey(keyCode) {
 const event = new KeyboardEvent(&#x27;keydown&#x27;, {
 key: keyCode === 37 ? &#x27;ArrowLeft&#x27; : &#x27;ArrowRight&#x27;,
 keyCode: keyCode,
 code: keyCode === 37 ? &#x27;ArrowLeft&#x27; : &#x27;ArrowRight&#x27;,
 which: keyCode,
 bubbles: true
 });
 document.dispatchEvent(event);
 }

 function autoScroll() {
 const currentName = getCurrentAnimalName();
 
 if (direction === &#x27;right&#x27;) {
 pressKey(39); &#x2F;&#x2F; Right arrow
 
 if (currentName === &#x27;Pando Clone&#x27;) {
 console.log(&#x27;Reached Pando Clone, switching to left&#x27;);
 direction = &#x27;left&#x27;;
 }
 } else {
 pressKey(37); &#x2F;&#x2F; Left arrow
 
 if (currentName === &#x27;DNA&#x27;) {
 console.log(&#x27;Reached DNA, switching to right&#x27;);
 direction = &#x27;right&#x27;;
 }
 }
 }

 &#x2F;&#x2F; Start the interval
 intervalId = setInterval(autoScroll, 3000);
 
 &#x2F;&#x2F; Log start message and provide stop function
 console.log(&#x27;Auto-scroll started! To stop, call: stopAutoScroll()&#x27;);
 
 &#x2F;&#x2F; Expose stop function globally
 window.stopAutoScroll = function() {
 clearInterval(intervalId);
 console.log(&#x27;Auto-scroll stopped&#x27;);
 };
 })();</code></pre>

My understanding is that picked fruits and veg are still alive [1], and often respirating [2]. This is a big component in figuring out how to refrigerate them at the optimal temperatures and atmospheric makeup.1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;healthland.time.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;21&#x2F;theyre-alive-harvested-produce-still-respond-to-light&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;healthland.time.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;21&#x2F;theyre-alive-harveste...</a>
2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;agriculture.institute&#x2F;food-chemistry-and-physiology&#x2F;respiration-respiratory-climacteric-fruits-vegetables&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;agriculture.institute&#x2F;food-chemistry-and-physiology&#x2F;...</a>

I got the reference, it&#x27;s just the &#x27;not technically alive&#x27; part that I was calling out

I think the banana was mostly added as a joke: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fiducial_marker#%22Banana_for_scale%22" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fiducial_marker#%22Banana_for_...</a>

It claims a banana isn&#x27;t technically living, but a banana has living cells so I&#x27;m not sure how accurate that is. I&#x27;m not sure when they&#x27;re all considered &#x27;dead&#x27; after harvesting though - maybe some wiggle room there.

This is simply beautiful, and will definitely inspire me with some arty projects I&#x27;m working on.Great work -&gt; the minimalist UI, art and music fits amazingly.One thing I noticed: the site&#x27;s images fail to load if the brave adblocker is on

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=KEHCCsFFIuY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=KEHCCsFFIuY</a>Star Size Comparison 3, simply a stunning visualization.

1 nitpick: The Dwarf Lanternshark is not found off the coast of &quot;Columbia&quot; but &quot;Colombia!&quot;

Link? couldn&#x27;t find the IQ test in more projects. And super skeptical neal.fun is trying to trick people into $30&#x2F;month subscriptionsedit: I turned off my ad blocker and discovered the site is showing some ads. Guessing you clicked on an ad?also it&#x27;s pretty ironic because one of his projects is showcasing dark patterns: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neal.fun&#x2F;dark-patterns&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neal.fun&#x2F;dark-patterns&#x2F;</a>

This is definitely not something Neal would ever do. Can you share the URL you&#x27;re talking about? There&#x27;s no IQ test in his projects list at all. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neal.fun&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;neal.fun&#x2F;</a>

Are you sure about that? for me it just leads to neal.fun, which is a well loved by HN list of projects, but no IQ test nor begging for money.

I can&#x27;t seem to find the IQ test. I see captcha and other &quot;games&quot;

Ironically this sounds like a piece of satire Neal would make.

For what it&#x27;s worth, there are AdSense interstitial ads on the site, so you probably got duped by one of those ads.

Saw this too on mobile - I think it&#x27;s an ad - I requested a paid ad-free version elsewhere in the comments

EDIT: Nevermind. Perhaps it was an ad that I clicked on. Lots of comments here indicating they don&#x27;t see it, and some that did.My Original comment here (too late to delete):Beware. When you reach the end there is a &quot;more projects&quot; button. In there is a cute IQ test (possibly appealing to the HN crowd). When you reach the end of the test it asks for email, and then ultimately wants $1 to get your results. If you pay by credit card due note that there is an auto-checked box for some $29.99 per month subscription for... something.

Missing a mushroom from Oregon [1][1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;strange-but-true-...</a>

Totally agree! Even as adults, the sense of scale hits differently when you interact with it. Your daughter will probably love discovering it too.

&gt; When my daughter is old enoughFwiw, I&#x27;ve done a pinch-nail-hand-arms 1-10-100-1000 mm &quot;body as size reference&quot; a couple of times around 5ish. And a 1000x &quot;micro view&quot; &quot;pinch is zoomed to arms size&quot; &quot;it&#x27;s like a scale model or doll playset - everything zoomed together&quot; world of &quot;bacteria sprinkles, red blood cell candies (M&amp;M minis or concave Smarties minis or Sweetarts - there&#x27;s lots of cell candy analogs), hair poles, salt&#x2F;sugar boxes&quot;. Stories of sitting on a grain of salt and eating... etc; pet eyelash mites. No idea if it actually worked.I did some user-test videos, now only on archive.org.[1] Hmm... the &quot;Arms, hands&quot; video there now doesn&#x27;t seem to play inline? - but does wget&#x27;ed and browsered. :&#x2F;[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20221007220513&#x2F;www.clarifyscience.info&#x2F;part&#x2F;Atoms" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20221007220513&#x2F;www.clarifyscienc...</a>

When my daughter is old enough, I&#x27;m definitely going to show her a bunch of visualizations on Neal&#x27;s site as supplementary education. I learned so much from these visualizations as an adult, and even without being able to read you can get a sense of scale.

I felt like I was at a museum exhibit. It is fantastic.

Tools like this are surprisingly effective for teaching, especially compared to static diagrams. Interaction makes the scale differences stick.

Neal.fun is good clean fun - my kids love it too. Neal, if you are listening, would pay for an ad-free version (I already bought you some coffees too).

In generalized, abstract sort of way it&#x27;s probably accurate, but in reality most neurons don&#x27;t look much like that and many have dendrites orders of magnitude longer than the one in that image.  Stringing all your dendrites end-to-end they can probably easily go to the moon and back.

What surprised me most was how large a single neuron is.

Nit: the tool-tips on the action icons in the top-right aren&#x27;t consistent.When music is playing the tool tip is &quot;unmute&quot; which is a verb. It should either be &quot;mute&quot; (to indicate what clicking will do) or &quot;unmuted&quot; (adjective) indicating the current state. Similarly, when the music is muted the tool-tip should either be &quot;muted&quot; or &quot;unmute&quot;.I&#x27;m not sure _which_ is wanted (verb or adjective) because the ruler tool-tip uses &quot;Hide Ruler&quot; and &quot;Show Ruler&quot; (verb), while the units tool-tip uses &quot;Units: imperial&quot; and &quot;Units: Metric&quot; (adjective). The info tool-tip (&quot;Info&quot;) is also an adjective.For consistency, I&#x27;d use a verb-phrase in all the tool tips:- &quot;Show info&quot;- &quot;Switch units to metric&#x2F;imperial&quot;- &quot;Hide&#x2F;show ruler&quot;- &quot;Mute&#x2F;unmute music&quot;I mean, I know this is pedantic nit-picking, but the site is so perfect, what else am I going to do?

Nice. Two quick UI thoughts. Upon loading, perhaps start with some unit selected, and a default amount 1, so there&#x27;s immediate content to be seen? And to extend the experience, maybe add a &quot;dice roll&quot; button, so users can &quot;see more neat things&quot; click-click-click without the cognitive overhead of pathing the option space

Great job.I did a side project that helps with comparisons, but in a rather different way (e.g. how many African elephants does something weigh). Not as slick as this site, but someone might find it useful:<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;howmanyelephants.co.uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;howmanyelephants.co.uk&#x2F;</a>

He always makes great content, I love it.

For me it appears in millimetres, but I&#x27;m in Canada not the US. I&#x27;m guessing the default is chosen based on your browser&#x27;s language. You can change the units in the top right.Edit: I checked the page&#x27;s code and it does indeed set the units based on language. If your language is &quot;en-US&quot; you get imperial by default, everyone else gets metric.

It was great until Sea snail appeared in inches. Transitioning from micrometer&#x2F;milliliter to inches is pretty rough

Did you just escape from a religious sect living inside an underwater cavern or something?

Sorry to say that my first reaction was that this is heresy. . . all this talk of science is a hoax.But then the music calmed me right down and I wended my way through, not understanding 99% of what I saw but in awe of nature and Neal&#x27;s art nonetheless.

I am sure everyone has their own mind blown moment, and for me it was there being an animal about the size of a red blood cell.

The Japanese spider crab being the same size as a tiger shocked me.

looks like they don&#x27;t show up with an adblocker

The following from clicking on the i on the top-right after starting the show:&gt; Created by Neal Agarwal&gt; Illustrations by Julius Csotonyi&gt; Production by Liz Ryan&gt; Music &amp; SFX by Aleix Ramon&gt; Cello performance by Iratxe IbaibarriagaBeautiful work.

If you click the &quot;i&quot; info button in the top right, it&#x27;ll list the full credits, including those who worked on the music.

The music is so moving, tear inducing. One of the best links I&#x27;ve seen posted here and I&#x27;ve been here 15+ years. Well done Neal. I wish credit was given to the music, anyone know who created it?

So many loving comments, I have nothing more to add to them, and nothing to subtract from them.

So wonderful.
Thanks for making this so open.
I&#x27;ll show it to my kids.
The artwork is very good and the soundtrack too.

And the atoms in the proteins and DNA that are exactly replicated to the atom each have a feature sizes resolved at fractions of a nanometer in 3 dimensions (and likely in time&#x2F;dynamics too).

For comparison: ASML machines print chips with precision up to 2nm.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.asml.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;products&#x2F;euv-lithography-systems&#x2F;twinscan-nxe-3800e" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.asml.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;products&#x2F;euv-lithography-systems&#x2F;twi...</a>

I didn&#x27;t know tardigrades can be big enough to be seen with the naked eye. Apparently big enough to be seen but not big enough to be recognised without magnification.

Fun to see the Jerboa. I recently read a family history written by my uncle and he believes this is the source of our family name.

Why would th3 website switch from metric to usa units out of nowhere m

(Uninsightful comment but I’m gonna put it here anyway)
The US spelling of haemoglobin is all kinds of wrong.
Love the site. Would love some algae in there though. Perhaps a desmid or diatom?

Always a joy to see neal.fun on the HN front page.

&gt;Music &amp; SFX by Aleix Ramon
&gt;Cello performance by Iratxe IbaibarriagaGot a link to the music?

I’m pleasantly surprised that Tyrannosaurus rex’s tiny hands were depicted so accurately. As far as I recall, scientists are still puzzled about why it even had hands. Apparently, they were too small to be useful for anything, not even scratching its face.

This has DNA as the smallest object and has a large protein next to it, so it misses the fact that a gene&#x27;s DNA is almost always larger by weight and volume than the protein it encodes.

Beautiful website, love that it&#x27;s using vue.

this has more of an indie gem feel compared to the blockbuster that was stimulation clicker.  as others have mentioned it reminds me of scale of the universe flash animation.  I think borrowing some ideas from that, including zooming in and out rather than side to side, could have benefits here.

These are all riffs on &quot;Powers of 10&quot;, a film made in the 70&#x27;s for IBM by Charles and Ray Eames: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0</a>

CGP Grey does a similar video — spanning the sizes of our entire observable universe — called &quot;Metric Paper&quot; [0][0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.yout-ube.com&#x2F;watch?v=pUF5esTscZI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.yout-ube.com&#x2F;watch?v=pUF5esTscZI</a>Even if you&#x27;ve never taken a mild psychedelic, this video hits in a similar manner (as sober metaphor).----I still drive with Neal.fun&#x27;s Internet Roadtrip (same OP link author), every time I&#x27;m out in my workshop.

Did a great job keeping the scale jumps fresh. Every step had a little twist instead of just a commonly known larger animal on the next slide. Wild that the Japanese spider crab is basically the same size as an orangutan.

&gt; Human: A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.Thanks for the laugh!

One of the books that got me introduced to this fascinating aspect of our natural world is John Tyler Bonner&#x27;s Size and Cycle. It has features amazing log-log plots of how different organisms from grow with time: from eggs to full-grown organisms. This kind of visualisation gives you a different perspective on growth and scaleFor example, Sequoia gigantea
Sequoia is the largest tree and can be effectively compared
to the annual plant shown above. Fertilization
and the early growth to the seed stage are essentially
similar, but because of the cambium and the possibility
of secondary thickening, the size of the tree can
increase enormously. As can be seen from Figure 1 in
the text, the sequoia does not begin to set seed until
it is sixty years old and eighty meters tall.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;postimg.cc&#x2F;hfdGGJ8H" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;postimg.cc&#x2F;hfdGGJ8H</a>

Interesting things from this:- Smallest animal: Myxobolus Shekel. Smaller than a WBC at 10 micrometeres.- Biggest butterfly: Queen Alexandra&#x27;s Birdwing. Bigger than human brain at 18cm.- Largest insect to ever live: Meganeura (283 MYA). At 40cm long, a dragonfly larger than a house cat.- Rafflesias are larger than German Shepherds- Earth&#x27;s largest crab: Japanese Spider Crab. 1m, legs pan of 3.75m. More than half the size of a human.- Always thought Mososaurs were largest animal to ever live but it&#x27;s the Blue whale at 26m. I don&#x27;t think I ever appreciated how unfathomably huge they are. (The largest Mosasaur found was 13m. There&#x27;s a speculated size of 17m as well.)- World&#x27;s largest living tree: Hyperion - a giant redwood in california at 115m.Love seeing something so polished and inspiring. Amazing illustrations and even better music.Thanks Neal for these projects!

The music is phenomenal. Really, really phenomenal.

Onl missing a Wikipedia link on each page!

Why not &quot;microinches&quot; while you&#x27;re at it?

Is banana a life? If yes, then hundreds of other lives are not included in this project.A simple idea but fabulous execution!

awesome that there was a banana for scale!

Great webapp. There is a similar app that I love to scroll through from time to time. Its free and needs no internet connection.
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;universe-in-a-nutshell&#x2F;id1526364758">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;universe-in-a-nutshell&#x2F;id15263...</a>
The range of size in the universe, from the tiniest particles to the epic galaxies - we take you on a journey of size that lets you explore it all with a single swipe.

Size of Life