About Scale Of Everything™
Created by Nolan Schleiff
Scroll down to zoom from the edge of the observable universe to the Planck length, about 62 powers of ten. The big number in the top left is the width of your screen at that moment. Every circle is drawn to scale against it: solid circles are objects, dashed circles are distances or orbits, and a dotted circle is an upper limit.
What's Simplified
- Sizes and distances are real but often approximate, and scientists' estimates for some of them differ.
- Directions are arranged to fit a flat screen. The distance of a star, galaxy or supercluster from us is real; which way it sits is mostly not.
- The climber on Everest, the runner, the football players, Voyager 1 and the planets in the solar system views are drawn larger than they'd really be, so you can see them.
- The unnamed stars and galaxies in the background are placed randomly, at the real average density for that part of space. Named ones are at their real distances.
- Animations are illustrations, not simulations.
Sources
- Physical constants, including the Planck length: CODATA recommended values.
- Particle sizes and limits: Particle Data Group reviews; proton radius from recent CODATA values.
- Planets, the Sun and Voyager 1: NASA planetary fact sheets and NASA/JPL mission status.
- Distances to stars: ESA's Hipparcos and Gaia missions.
- Density of stars near the Sun: the 10-parsec census of nearby stars (Reylé et al., 2021).
- The Milky Way's satellites and the Local Group: McConnachie (2012) catalogue of nearby galaxies.
- Laniakea and nearby superclusters: Tully et al., Nature (2014), and other large-scale-structure surveys.
- Size of the observable universe: standard cosmology using ESA Planck mission results.
Get Involved
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A text version of every stop is available for screen readers.
Scale Of Everything™ · © 2026 Nolan Schleiff. All rights reserved.