BROB Turns You Into Your Avatar Pt. XI OOC Thread

Scaling For the Uninitiated: an effort to inform on the drastic levels of scaling when operating at universal levels.




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Chapter one: Length and Distance.

Section one: "The meter, and you"


Today, we are going to be discussing the concept of distances, the length between two points, and how absurd these distances can get when operating with an entire universe. We're going to be starting with the foundation of these distances, the meter.

• Well, what is a meter? A meter, or metre, as it is more correctly spelled, is "the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 ⁄ 299,792,458 of a second. It consists of 100 centimeters, or 1,000 millimeters. For those who use imperial, a meter is 39.370 inches, or roughly 3.3 feet. A meter is not a yard(36 in), and it will never be.
• Now then, why bother with the meter at all? Why spend time thinking of this humble length indicator? Simple, my good simpleton, it is the basis for the significantly larger units of distance that we will be using, primarily, the kilometer. For an accurate idea of how much a meter is, try getting a yard stick, or a basic ruler. Then, measure out the aforementioned 39.37 inches. Viola, a meter. If you cannot do this, either from lacking the necessary equipment or from being illiterate, then why exactly are you even reading this in the first place?
• Understanding the distance covered by a single meter, and how it scales up to the ludicrously higher stages is very important to not becoming completely lost when we reach levels beyond planetary.

• The humble meter has 20 multiples, both larger and smaller, from the humble millimeter to the insanely larger yottameter. However, for ease in explanation, we shall start with the ever present foundation for large distances, the kilometer.
• The kilometer is one thousand meters, or 3,281 feet. This will be our point for explaining what is to come. Now, understanding this size allows us to go higher, with each higher level being 1,000 times larger than the previous. Megameter, gigameter, and so on, further and further, covering significantly more distance, and as such, far more space. However, we still need to set down exactly why the kilometer is so important.

• But before we do, we'll list the stages of meter. Past the 10 and 100x points, each subsequent number is 1,000 times larger or smaller than the previous, so keep that in mind. From smallest to largest, it goes yoctometre > zeptometre > attometre > femtometre > picometre > nanometre > micrometre > millimetre > centimetre > metre > decametre > hectometre > kilometre > megametre > gigametre > terametre > petametre > exametre > zettametre > and yottametre. It goes higher, but we've run out of words.

Most people shouldn't have any problem picturing exactly how to use the metre, or visualizing what that's like, but for completions sake, not to mention how short this first section is, I'll throw in a few examples of everyday objects that can help for later.

1. The average male American is 1.78m, the average female being 1.64m, with the averages in the UK being almost the exact same, with only .14m difference for males and .04m for females.
2. The African Elephant, the largest living land animal, stands about 3.5m tall, and about 7.5m counting the tusks.
3. The largest living animal on Earth, the Blue Whale is about 30m long.
4. The longest animal to ever live, the Argentinosaurus was roughly 40m long.
5. The tallest trees in the world, the North American Redwood, can grow to a recorded height of 115.5m.

As you can see, the natural world can produce some pretty mammoth lifeforms(technically including the mammoth), though man-made structures outdo them by a good measure. The tallest man-made structure in the world is the Burj Khalifa tower in Buhai, at a staggering 829.8 m tall, and there are hundreds of buildings more than 100m tall.
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Section Two: Where we examine interplanetary distances and sizes in the Sol system.

Now, we have already determined what a meter and a kilometer are, so now we'll move on to how they work into explaining just how ridiculous the scale we're dealing with is. We'll start with the most basic model for planetary size, the Earth. Just how big is Earth? The Earth has an equatorial radius of 6,378 km, this being its widest point.

• Now, this gives us a diameter of 12,756 km. 12.75 million meters, or 42,201,762 feet. This is a big number. This is obviously the longest single line you could get for the Earth, but doesn't take into account the surface area of the planet.
• If you have a ruler, it will not help you at all in visualizing this. We will later calculate how much energy is required to explode the planet.

Next, we move on to the closest celestial object, Luna, our moon. The Moon is 1,738 km at its ED(equatorial diameter), for a diameter of 3,476 km. The moon is roughly 0.273 Earths in size. This is important.

• The Moon is situated a scant galactic distance from Earth, a trifling 356,400 km to 406,700 km at the extreme perigee (closest) and apogee (farthest). This is a little over a light-second away, which we will be covering soon. The Moon is in visible range of the planet Earth, to the point where one could see physical changes with only a 1.26 seconds delay, practically walking distance.
• Before we move on, a quick explanation of the AU, the Astronomical Unit, or in terms most people will actually understand, the distance between the Earth's approximate distance from Sol, covering 149,597,871 km. Pretty damn far, though still pretty tiny compared to the later stuff.
• Now then, we'll go over a quick comparison of the Earth to the other objects in the Solar System, including Sol, the star at its center, starting with the dwarf planet, 136199 Eris. Never heard of it? You have now. Eris is located roughly 97.56 AU(as discussed above) from the sun at its Aphelion(the point where it is furthest from the Sun) and 37.77 AU at its Perihelion(where it is at its closest to the Sun. Eris is the largest, furthest point in the solar system, with a mean radius of 1,163 km, give or take 6, diameter 2,326 km.
• Next up is Makemake, m-R of 680 to 740, diameter of 1,360 to 1,480 km. Its orbit takes it between 38.51 AU and 53.07 AU.
• Then comes Haumea, an egg-shaped thing, with the following fancy dimensions 1,960 × 1,518 × 996 km. Distance of 34.72 to 51.54 AU.
• Last is the sad case of Pluto, once a planet, now not. 134340 Pluto has an m-R of 1,161 km, with a diameter of 2,322 km. Distance ranges from 29.66 to 48.87 AU.

Now we get to the fun stuff. The planets.

• First up is the blue giant Neptune, lord of the ocean. It averages about 30.1 AU from the Sun, with an e-radius of 24,764 km, diameter 49,528 km.
• Next is mighty Uranus, average distance of 19.5 AU, with an e-radius of 25,559 km, diameter 51118km.
• Following is the original ring-world, Saturn. Average of 9.63 AU, e-radius of 60,268 km, diameter 120,536 km.
• Now comes the big one, the titan of the Solar system, Jupiter. Average of 5.1 AU, e-radius of 71,492km, and a diameter of 142,984 km. Big planet is big.
• Though it's not a planet, I'll throw it in since it's large enough to be counted a dwarf-planet. Ceres, located just after Jupiter at roughly 2.77 AU, an e-radius of 487.3 km, and a diameter of 974.6 km.

Now, back to the actual planets. Our close red neighbor, the Red Planet itself, Mars. Average of 1.5 AU from the Sun, equatorial-radius of 3,396 km, and a diameter of 6,792.

• Next comes our closest neighbor among the planets, Venus. 0.723 AU, 6,051.8 km e-radius, 12,126 km diameter.
• Finally, we come to the planet closest to our heavenly life-bringer, the bleak rock Mercury. A scant 0.387 AU from the Sun, a e-radius of 2,439.7 km, and a diameter of 4,879.4 km.
• Okay, now we come to the fun one, and finally start explaining how wrong people are when they think someone can go from planet to star like that. We come to that which gives us life, the thing that made this pointless rambling possible. The Solar center, Sol, our celestial father, the Sun.
• Existing in the center of the Solar System means no AU, so instead we'll start on the next scale, and list how far from the galactic center it is, in everyone's favorite astronomical designator, Light-years. The Sun is located roughly 26,000 or so light-years out, and is a towering inferno with an e-radius of around 696,000 km, and a diameter of 1,392,000. So yeah, it's big.

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Section Three: Light in repose.

Okay, now we get to the serious measurements, those of light-times. Light-seconds, light-minutes, and so on, including everyone's favorite, light-years. I'm sure you know this, but since this is a guide for those who don't, I'll say it anyway. Light-times are not measurements of time, they are measurements of length. Going one light-second does not take one second(unless you are moving at light-speed), but rather takes you a distance of 299,792,458 meters.

• Yeah, that's a lot.
• For reference, going that fast would allow you to travel across the Earth about 23.5 times in a single second. The distance from the Earth to the moon is roughly 1.28 light-seconds.

Moving along, we come to light-minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc. To save space, I'll just list their distances.

• A light-minute is 17,999,867,700 meters, or about 18 gigameters.
• A light-hour is 1,079,992,062,000 meters, or a little over 1 terameter.
• A light-day is 25,919,809,488,000 meters, or around 26 terameters.
• A light-week is 181,438,666,416,000 meters, or 181 terameters.
• A light-month, 788,394,205,733,042 meters, or 788 terameters.
• And at long last, we reach the ever present light-year, a ridiculously massive 9,460,730,472,580,800 meters, or 9.46 petameters.

• As a side-note, there also exists the Parsec, equal to about 3.26 light-years, but we wont be using that.
• Now, we have finally reached the point were we can describe interstellar distances, starting with the closest star to Sol, Proxima Centauri. This star sits at about 4.2 light-years. Consider the lengths we've gone through so far just to reach the closest star. Consider that we have dealt with 2 stars so far, and have not even toughed on massive stars, galaxies, clusters, or any of the other celestial objects that beat out our tiny star.

Starting to get the scale yet?

Now, let's do a quick list of close stars in the galaxy, to give an idea of real scale.
First up, Barnard's Star, at5.96 ly. Next is Wolf 359 at 7.78 ly, Lalande 21185 at 8.29 ly, and Sirius at 8.58 ly. This is about 81,173,067,500 megameters from Earth. Pretty damn massive.
But, this is simple distance, and we need to know scale of size as well. So, let's start with a list of large stars.

• Note that I am nowhere near listing all of the stars, rather just a few names that sound interesting. Listing them all would take far too much space, and you can just look at a wiki if you feel so inclined. -I'm doing this because I can't find a good list of planets, but most extrasolar planets are larger then Jupiter, so that should tell you something.
• VV Cephei B is roughly 10 times the size of Sol, measured, like most stars larger than the Sun, in Solar Radii, equal to the radius of the Sun.
• Next up is Theta Centauri at 16 R(o) (best way of showing it I have), then Epsilon Leonisat 23 R(0), R136a1(most massive star known) at 35.4 R(o), and Aldebaran at 44.2.
• Skipping ahead to the really big ones, we have the Pistol Star at 340, Rho Cassiopeiae at 340, Betelgeuse at a tremendous 1,180, and the largest known star, the titanic VY Canis Majoris, at a varying size of 1,800 to 2,100 times the size of the sun.

Okay guys, I'm mentally exhausted. Mostly off tomorrow, so expect some good posting, but I'm done for today.

Question we gonna ever break threads anymore since we got no cap? ALso update the OOC link to this thread? Will be responding sometime this week... I think. Probably a sign of me slowly going Nuts

We can break the threads if you guys want, just no real point to for now.

All the material is over whelming, any advice on how to enter the thread?

Mostly just show up. The intros are rather loose, and I tend to make it people just show up at Home-Base, our central base. I leave how you get there to you.
And believe me, it's even more insane than it looks. This is not a thread for the faint of heart. Or something less ominous sounding. Maybe, not for those with any sanity left to loose?

Thanks.

Can we harness the power of Yaoi fangirls?

Give me a bit you guys, work needs doing. Should be done within the hour.

Odds are you'll within a week or two have changed or made more ripples than me. Although that's not hard.

Not certain I'll enter at all.

And, I'm out. Till next time. Pleasant dreams.

Scaling For the Uninitiated: an effort to inform on the drastic levels of scaling when operating at universal levels.

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Section Four: Intergalactic Shenanigans, or how to discern just how big the universe is.

Now, moving right along from the last bit, we get to things beyond single figures. I.e., we're going to be examining galaxies. Why galaxies? Because dealing with all the crap in-between is too much work, so instead, I'll be explaining a few basic ideas.

• Our galaxy is actually pretty big for a galaxy, containing something in the neighbourhood of 100 Billion stars, and stretching about 100 thousand light-years in diameter. However, starting with this is rather stupid, as there are a great many things that exist before that. So instead, we'll be starting with dwarf galaxies, and work our way up.
• We could go for Nebula first, bit they really aren't important for this.
• Now, let's start with the smallest known galaxy, Willman 1, with a miniscule 81.5 ly radius. After this comes a few galaxies of varying size, such as Leo II DG(warf galaxy) at 2,000 ly in diameter, Canis Major DG at 5,000, and the Sagittarius DG at 10,000.
• Next, we come to galaxies around the size of the Milky Way, starting with the Triangulum Galaxy at 50,000 ly, the Sombrero galaxy, also at 50,000, and our own Milky Way, at 100,000 ly, or about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters, give or take a smidgen.

• If it wasn't obvious yet, these things are huge. We are not even close to done yet.

Next comes the larger galaxies, starting with our closest big neighbour, Andromeda, at approximately 150,000 ly. Then comes the Pinwheel at around 170,000 ly, the Whirlpool at roughly 180,00 ly, and Virgo A, at 250,000 or so.

• Skipping the remainder, we come to IC 1101, the largest galaxy known, at a tremendous size of around 5 Million light years, larger than everything previous combined. It is actually larger than the distance between the Milky way and Andromeda.
• Next, we come to the largest possible objects in the universe, Galactic Clusters. These things are the real deal, and only the baddest and most powerful can hope to even budge these things. The first is Abell 2029, at around 6 million ly, which actually contains the aforementioned IC 1101, which takes up most of it by itself. Then come our Local Group, around 10 million ly, of which the Milky Way and Andromeda are the big dogs out of about 30 or so galaxies.This Local Group actually exists in a larger one known as the Fornax Cluster, twice as large at 20 million ly.
• In our local city of the universe, the largest cluster is the Virgo Cluster, at 30 million ly. All of these exist as parts of the Virgo Supercluster, which is an immense 110 million ly in diameter.
• As a note, there exists a region of space known as the Eradinus Supervoid, a region of space 500 million ly in diameter, existing just above absolute zero. It may or may not be a link to a parallel universe. Or perhaps even a perpendicular one.
• At last, we reach the big stuff. Starting with the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, a full 1 Billion ly in diameter, the second largest object in the known universe. The largest of all is known as the Sloan Great Wall, a thing that is around 1.3 billion ly around.

• And as one last aside, we get what is known as the Gigaparsec, about 3.3 billion light years in distance. Just a thing to note.

The visible universe is roughly 93 Billion light years in diameter, and is generally how large an non-specifically large universe is considered. The total size of the universe is considered to be anywhere from 160 billion ly, to being infinite in size. When referring to a 'Universe' in size, we take it as exactly 100 billion light years. So, if we say something is ten times larger than a(or The) universe, we are saying it is 1 Trillion ly in size, usually height.

• So, just for reference, when referring to a a universe, that is around 87,036,861,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters. Big area of all that exists in our relative dimensional space is big.

• Now, a quick note on the concept of multiverses. A multiverse is, by definition, a set of universes. This means they share a common point, and are at least somewhat connected. For instance, saying that LotR and Sin City exist in the same multiverse is false, but saying that Arkham City exists in the same multiverse as Superman Returns is true, even though they share different medias, characters, and perhaps even physics. Just an example.

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Section Five: The head of a pin is huge.

Now we come to the inverse of everything I've been writing up til now. Tiny things. Really, really tiny things. With this last section of chapter one, we will be discussing everything for a decimeter to Quantum foam. These should actually be a bi easier to picture, as you don't need to be in a plane or have a kilometer stick to figure it out.

• Let's start with something simple, the centimeter. Now, how big is a centimeter? About this much ''''. It's a little less than an inch. Exactly 2.54 inches to be exact. A centimeter is, as the name suggests, one one hundredth of a meter. If you have a ruler, there yah go.
• Before that exists the decimeter, one tenth of a meter, or around 3.94 inches or so. Most people don't use this for reasons of it not being a small enough, or large enough, measurement.

Now, much like the kilometer derivatives, I'll just be listing the sizes smaller than centimeter, there being no real point in trying to give ideas for these things, since they're so damn small.

• First up is the millimeter, which is what the smaller numbers are based off of, and there exists 25.4 mm per inch. Following this is the micrometer, one thousand time smaller, or one millionth of a meter. Then comes nanometers, then picometers, femtometers, attometers, zeptometers, and yoctometers.
• To give you an idea of the sheer tinyness of these things, the radius of a Proton is .85 femtometers, a zepto meter is about ten times the diameter of an Electron, and a yoctometer is smaller than anything that can logically exist.
• As a side note, nanotechnology, often used as "Tiny-tech", or technology on a scale small enough to be able to do anything, is so named as technology between 1 and 100 nanometers in size. To give you an idea of what this means, a civilization using femtotech would have its tech made from virtually nothing but the building blocks of matter, and things beyond that, ie attotech, zeptotech and yoctotech all use technology on a scale where technology cannot actually be made.

In essence, it's impossible.
We still use it.
Deal with it.


Then we reach even smaller sizes. These are the points that can only be described in measurements of nonexistent, things that can only be theorized to exists. Fun stuff, let's finish up.

• First up is the neutrino, an object so small even things like gravity hold almost no hold over it, and it passes through matter easily. At a single yoctometer in diameter, they are so small that they are tiny to miniscules infinitesimal. After this though, things get odd.
• For a great span of tiny, there exists nothing. From 1 yoctometer all the way down to one one Billionth of a yoctometer, there is just a whole lot of nothing. Then, at 1/1,000,000,000,000 of a yoctometer, or 10-35, we reach the very foundation of existence. These aren't the building blocks, these are the groundwork, the atoms that make up the atoms atoms.
• Three things 'exist' on this scale, Planck lengths, quantum foam, and strings.
• Wait, what?
• Yep, those are things, and they exist at this scale. The smallest conceivable size, where there is literally nothing that could ever be smaller, period. Manipulate on this level, and you control reality entirely. This is to atomic manipulation as atomic manipulation is to typing. If you can do ANYTHING at this scale, you are GOD, all caps, nothing better, ever, forever, period.
• Except in cases where there are things better then you. Which there are.

And as a final note, for the TLDR people, here. http://htwins.net/scale2/

Why have these people not figured out that the Eliacube is there for them to use. They do it themselves also last post edited.

How much do you guys know about Total Annihilation: Kingdoms?

Awesome.

I know that TA is the predecessor to SupCom, which I know. Also, Krogoth. And nanolathes. That's about it.

Okay guys, short break.

Lords but this picked up fast.

This seems reasonable

Phantom Menace...is that you?

Moy is going to Constantinople circa April 15th 1453.

Yo, moy, listen. I'm not bagging on you, I'm just saying this. Every time, it's the same thing. You show up, be God, and whoever you help will, invariably, do whatever you want or say, because that's how being God to mortals works. All I'm saying is, either write the entire thing yourself, and have fun with it, or do something new or make it so I can do something with it. There's just literally nothing I can do when you do the 'help the mortals' schtick.

Ah, though this was the kind of response I was talking about. I know it isn't rude in the slightest but I just didn't want any more attention to be drawn to my actions than how far you went. It is just a psychological thing. I don't want people to be angry with me or disappointed or annoyed. When stuff is pointed out I feel awful. I want to hit my head against a friggin wall when it happens and that was why I asked for no further attention to be given to that.

Oh...so can I do the kill all the mortals schtick? Be the one that ends their civilizations one by one? That might be fun, hell there are a few settings where I could do nothing but go around killing shit for loot and then "donating" it to the local bars. Maybe burn a few worlds down over a couple of centuries and making the lives of the beings there a living hell until the death of the last being.