A small big thing

Have you seen the transit of Venus yesterday? I have to admit that I have forgotten it. Read about it in the newspaper last Saturday, but anyway, I missed it. Today on the internet I found an article about it, I guess it’s from Austria. There I have also found these incredible pictures.

taken by the NASA

the Venus passed between Sun and Earth

The Venus orbits the Sun in 225 days on Earth. The last transit was in 2004, and the next will be in December 2117 – so I guess none of us will see this. It’s like a once in a lifetime experience. Like the solar eclipse in 1999. I remembered that everyone bought such special glasses, that it was in the media all the time, and that for a short moment the day turned into night.

This time it was ‘only’ the Venus which passed between the Sun and the Earth, but I love these natural spectacles. It shows us that we are only very small in a very big universe. Because of the great distance we saw the Venus as such a small thing, arousing such big interest, not just for the NASA.

Image source: http://diepresse.com/home/panorama/welt/763566/Venustransit_Ein-kleiner-Punkt-mit-grosser-Aufmerksamkeit?gal=763566&index=1&direct=&_vl_backlink=&popup=

Wanna know more? http://www.transitofvenus.org/

Even the biggest is still small

Compared to our entire universe even the biggest man is very small. But in it, a small boy is very big. The 14-year old Cary Huang from California made a ‘scale of the universe’. With some technical help of his twin brother Michael, Cary compared everything in our world with each other.

"My seventh grade science teacher showed us a size comparison video on cells, and I thought it was fascinating”, Cary said and added he “decided to make my own interactive version that included a much larger range of sizes.”

The project wasn’t for school, he did it for fun, worked over a year on it. He read astronomy books and also got some information from Wikipedia.

I have to say, that I really love it. It is so well done, it shows us how small we are in this world. It compares everything, from a little string to the milky way and the observable universe. So totally fascinating. And more wonderful to see that a 14-year-old did this. Such a smart guy. Dive into our marvelous world and scale the universe.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/page/scale-universe-cary-michael-huang-california-high-school-15573968