If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Impact of the visualization

  • Widely praised as still one of the most effective, visceral demonstrations of scale and emptiness in the solar system.
  • The horizontal scroll and sparse layout make the “nothingness” between planets emotionally tangible in a way most analogies do not.
  • Several people note they’d seen many scale explanations before, but this one uniquely changes their intuition.

Light speed toggle and “slowness”

  • The “c” (light-speed) button is repeatedly highlighted as the feature that really drives home how empty and large space is.
  • Watching light take ~8 minutes just to reach Earth feels frustratingly slow, even to people who already “knew” the number.
  • Some argue this shows light is “incredibly slow”; others counter that light is very fast and space is just unbelievably big.

Relativity, time, and what travel would feel like

  • Extended discussion on special relativity:
    • Time dilation and length contraction: near light speed, travelers experience much shorter trip times than observers at rest.
    • In the limit at c, proper time for a photon is effectively zero; from its frame (mathematically extrapolated), departure and arrival are instantaneous.
  • Disagreement and clarification over how much subjective time passes at given fractions of c, and how this differs from external observers.
  • Concerns about relativistic travel hazards: dust impacts, radiation (blue-shifted light, cosmic rays), and speculative issues like the Unruh effect.

Feasibility of interstellar travel

  • Rocket equation and energy requirements are repeatedly cited as the main blockers; continuous 1g acceleration for months/years is far beyond current tech.
  • Ideas floated: antimatter drives, nuclear pulse propulsion, black-hole engines, giant laser sails, warp/“gravity” drives, stellar engines.
  • Consensus that reaching nearby stars with humans is theoretically compatible with known physics but practically extreme; trips to other galaxies are essentially impossible with anything rocket-like.
  • Cosmic expansion is discussed; several note it’s irrelevant for local galaxies but would limit ultra-long-range travel.

Generation ships and lifeforms that travel

  • Generation ship concepts raise unsolved problems: stable ecologies, self-repairing hardware/software, and resilient political/social systems.
  • Ethical and psychological questions: many generations would “not have signed up” for the journey.
  • Some argue we’re already on a kind of generation ship (Earth orbiting the Sun); others speculate that only very slow, long-lived, or non-biological life (AI, uploads) could realistically undertake such voyages.

Solar system vs stars; Mars and near-term colonization

  • Several commenters emphasize that the solar system itself is enormous and underutilized; just industrializing it could take centuries.
  • Asteroid mining and large orbital habitats are seen as more plausible near/medium-term steps than interstellar travel.
  • Debate over Mars colonization:
    • Critics stress radiation, self-sustaining biospheres, maintenance, and the lack of realistic closed-ecosystem testing.
    • Supporters note that, in principle, no “new physics” is required; the challenges are scale, reliability, and cost.

Philosophical perspectives on timescales

  • Some argue “slow” is relative to a reference frame: what is agonizingly slow to humans might be trivial to long-lived beings (e.g., stars, hypothetical post-humans).
  • This leads to reflections on plants’ timescales, stellar lifetimes, and the possibility of “slow life” capable of easy interstellar travel.
  • A minority insists light is objectively “slow” compared to galactic distances; others maintain “slow” only makes sense relative to observers.

Interface, implementation, and related works

  • Technically minded readers admire the simplicity: huge absolute left offsets in CSS, minimal JS, and a unit switch (pixels, buses, Great Wall of China, etc.).
  • Some complain about RSI-like scrolling and browser crashes; others point out fast-jump planet buttons and view-source as helpful.
  • There are nitpicks: planets shown in a straight line, average distances only, inclusion of Pluto as a “planet.”
  • Related visualizations mentioned: 1-pixel wealth inequality, xkcd on wealth, “Powers of Ten,” physical solar system models, and various documentaries and SF stories about scale and deep time.