Phenomena

The 17 simulations in Cosmic Scale, each a short story told step by step. Every page here carries the story's captions and its fuller explanations, as the app shows them.

Each is simulated from real physics and measurements; anything no eye could see, like magnetic fields and radio waves, is drawn and labelled as drawn.

Stars & remnants

• Pulsar · Beginner · 1:22 · 7 chapters
  How a dead star becomes a cosmic lighthouse. When a star of more than eight Suns dies, its core collapses into a neutron star: about 1.4 times the Sun's mass in a ball some 22 km across.
• The Sun's death · Beginner · 2:00 · 10 chapters
  How the Sun will swell into a red giant, then fade into a white dwarf. The Sun is 4.6 billion years old, about halfway through its life.
• A massive star explodes · Intermediate · 1:59 · 10 chapters
  How a star many times heavier than the Sun collapses and blows itself apart. Near the end of its life, a star of 18 Suns has swollen into a red supergiant 1.1 billion km across, like Betelgeuse.
• Two neutron stars collide · Advanced · 2:21 · 11 chapters
  How two dead stars collide, forge gold, and were both heard and seen from Earth 130 million years later. Two neutron stars, of 1.46 and 1.27 Suns but each only about 24 km across, circle each other 130 million light-years away.
• Magnetar · Intermediate · 2:14 · 10 chapters
  The strongest magnets known, and the day one flashed across the galaxy. A magnetar is a neutron star with the strongest magnetic field known.

Black holes

• A star torn apart · Advanced · 1:38 · 8 chapters
  How a black hole shreds a star that strays too close, and lights up a galaxy's heart. At the heart of a galaxy, a star like the Sun falls towards a black hole of a million Suns.
• How black holes are made · Intermediate · 1:49 · 9 chapters
  How the core of a giant star falls in on itself and closes off from the universe. A supergiant of 25 Suns, 1.3 billion km across, is nearing its end.
• Two black holes merge · Intermediate · 1:51 · 9 chapters
  How two black holes spiral together, shake space itself and were heard on Earth 1.3 billion years later. Two black holes, of 36 and 29 Suns, circle each other 1.3 billion light-years away.
• Quasar · Advanced · 2:12 · 10 chapters
  A black hole feeding so fast it outshines its whole galaxy. In 1963 Maarten Schmidt found that a faint point of light called 3C 273 was no star: its light had been stretched by the expanding universe on a journey of about 2 billion years.

Galaxies & cosmos

• The Milky Way meets Andromeda · Beginner · 2:27 · 11 chapters
  How our galaxy and its giant neighbour may merge into one, over billions of years. The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy, the two largest galaxies of our Local Group, are 2.5 million light-years apart and closing in at 115 km/s.
• The Big Bang · Beginner · 1:52 · 9 chapters
  How the universe grew from a hot, dense beginning into a web of galaxies, over 13.8 billion years. Galaxies strung along a web of filaments around empty voids: the universe 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang.

Near Earth

• Earth's magnetic shield · Beginner · 1:47 · 9 chapters
  How Earth holds off the wind from the Sun, and what a solar storm does. Molten iron churning in Earth's outer core makes a magnetic field.

What if

Theory, not observation. Nothing here has ever been seen. Each idea comes from real physics and says how it could be made, and what it would look like. Light is bent as the equations say it would be; the things themselves are drawn.

• Wormhole · Intermediate · 2:25 · 11 chapters
  A tunnel through space: how one could be held open, and what it would look like. A wormhole would be a tunnel through space joining two far-apart places.
• White hole · Intermediate · 1:46 · 8 chapters
  The mirror image of a black hole: how one could be made, and what it would look like. The equations of general relativity work the same whichever way time runs.
• Warp drive · Advanced · 2:06 · 9 chapters
  Carrying a ship faster than light by moving space itself: what it would take, and the view from inside. Nothing can outrun light through space, but space itself can stretch.
• Dyson swarm · Intermediate · 1:50 · 8 chapters
  Catching a whole star's light: how a civilization could build it, and how it would look. A star sends nearly all its light into empty space.
• Hawking evaporation · Advanced · 2:03 · 9 chapters
  A black hole's slow glow and last flash: how it would end, and what it would look like. A black hole is not quite black.