Cosmic Scale
Space simulations: how things in space happen
19 things that happen in space, played out step by step with real numbers. Each one is a simulation in the app, here as a story you can read.
S301: the fastest known star
A star that races round our galaxy's black hole every 8.7 years, at over 8% of the speed of light at its closest
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hits Jupiter
July 1994: a comet torn apart by Jupiter's tides crashes into it in 21 pieces, leaving dark scars almost as wide as Earth
The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs
Chicxulub, 66 million years ago: a 10 km asteroid, a crater 180 km wide, a world gone dark, and how we now watch for the next one
How a star is born
From a cold, dark cloud to a spinning core, a disk with jets, planets forming and fusion switching on
Pulsar
How a dead star becomes a cosmic lighthouse
Earth's magnetic shield
How Earth holds off the wind from the Sun, and what a solar storm does
The Sun's death
How the Sun will swell into a red giant, then fade into a white dwarf
A star torn apart
How a black hole shreds a star that strays too close, and lights up a galaxy's heart
A massive star explodes
How a star many times heavier than the Sun collapses and blows itself apart
Type Ia supernova
A white dwarf that explodes, the nickel that makes it shine for weeks, and how its brightness measured the accelerating universe
How black holes are made
How the core of a giant star falls in on itself and closes off from the universe
Two black holes merge
How two black holes spiral together, shake space itself and were heard on Earth 1.3 billion years later
Two neutron stars collide
How two dead stars collide, forge gold, and were both heard and seen from Earth 130 million years later
Magnetar
The strongest magnets known, and the day one flashed across the galaxy
Quasar
A black hole feeding so fast it outshines its whole galaxy
Gravitational lensing
How mass bends light into rings, crosses and arcs, and lets us weigh what we cannot see
The brightest gamma-ray burst
GRB 221009A, the brightest burst ever recorded: how a dying star's jet, under two degrees wide, swept across Earth from two billion years away
The Milky Way meets Andromeda
How our galaxy and its giant neighbour may merge into one, over billions of years
The Big Bang
How the universe grew from a hot, dense beginning into a web of galaxies, over 13.8 billion years
What if: ideas no one has observed
A what-if: physics allows it on paper, but no one has ever seen one. Everything shown follows the theory as it stands.
What if the Sun became a black hole?
The Sun squeezed into a black hole 6 km across: the planets keep their orbits, but the light and heat are gone
False vacuum decay
If empty space is not at its lowest energy, a bubble of true vacuum could grow at light speed: what that means, how it could start, and why it is no danger
What if the Moon disappeared?
Take the Moon away in an instant: what happens to the tides, the nights, Earth's tilt and the length of the day
Wormhole
A tunnel through space: how one could be held open, and what it would look like
White hole
The mirror image of a black hole: how one could be made, and what it would look like
Warp drive
Carrying a ship faster than light by moving space itself: what it would take, and the view from inside
Dyson swarm
Catching a whole star's light: how a civilization could build it, and how it would look
Hawking evaporation
A black hole's slow glow and last flash: how it would end, and what it would look like
Near light speed
Flying at 99% of light's speed: how the sky would crowd ahead and go dark behind, and what the trip would cost
Falling into a black hole
Fall into the black hole at the centre of our galaxy: what you would see, what you would feel, and how long you would have
A black hole crosses the Solar System
A lone black hole of ten Suns passes between Jupiter and Saturn: which planets are lost, what Earth feels, and how likely it is