I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over the next few months. I started small and am working my way up.
The Pillars of Creation as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Image courtesy of J. Hester, P. Scowen (ASU), HST, NASA.
1016 MAGNITUDE
10,000,000,000,000,000 m
1 Light-year
Pillars of Creation
4 light-years
Let’s be honest; once you hit a certain number of zeros, things begin to blur into the incomprehensible. There’s no word (philosophically speaking) for the scale we’re talking about here.
The Pillars of Creation were “trunks” of interstellar gas 7,000 light-years from Earth, photographed by the Hubble Telescope in 1995. The leftmost pillar was 4 light-years in length, with each of the finger-like protrusions at the top of the clouds larger than our solar system. We say “was” because the pillars were destroyed 6,000 years ago by a supernova shock wave. The wave’s approach to the pillars can be seen from Earth today, but their destruction won’t be visible for another millennium.
OK, now it's getting downright freaky. Light takes so long to get here that we still see what was obliterated long ago. Freedy Johnson did indeed poetically reinforce what science has known for centuries (blog post).
Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.
Previous posts on this topic include:
- 10-15 Protons and Neutrons
- 10-14 Atomic Nucleus of a Uranium Atom
- 10-13 Nada, Zilch, Zero, Zip
- 10-12 Gamma Rays
- 10-11 Fluorine Ion
- 10-10 Wavelength of Hard X-Rays
- 10-9 Carbon Nanotubes
- 10-8 Molecular Transport Nano Robot
- 10-7 HIV Virus
- 10-6 Red Blood Cells
- 10-5 Sand
- 10-4 Microelectromechanical Systems
- 10-3 Sonata Silicium Watch Components
- 10-2 Lego
- 10-1 Prosthetic Fairing
- 100 Biome Concept Car
- 101 Ma'erkang Housing Reconstruction
- 102 Shanghai Tower
- 103 Bay Bridge
- 104 Masdar City
- 105 Palm Islands
- 106 The Moon
- 107 Earth
- 108 Jupiter
- 109 The Sun
- 1010 Distance Light Travels in 34 Seconds
- 1011 Distance from Jupiter to the Sun
- 1012 Distance from Pluto to the Sun
- 1013 Voyager 2
- 1014 The Solar System
- 1015 Cat's Eye Nebula
Future blog posts will cover:
- 1017 Great Orion Nebula
- 1018 M15 Globular Cluster
- 1019 Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy
- 1020 Triangulum Galaxy
- 1021 The Milky Way
- 1022 IC 1101
- 1023 Local Group of Galaxies
- 1024 The Local Supercluster
- 1025 3C 273
- 1026 Outer Limit of the Universe
Measurement is alive in the lab.
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