Stellar nursery · 8,500 ly · Carina
Pillars of creation
Columns of cold gas three light-years tall, sculpted by the radiation of the stars being born inside them.
EXPLORER-VII
13.2 RS · v 0.31c · length 180 m
Chapter 01 · A journey through the cosmos
The universe is not the limit. It's the beginning.
Every atom in your body was forged in a star that died so you could look up. Tonight, the light that left it finally arrives.
Sgr A* · 4.3 million M☉ · Rs ≈ 12.7 million km
Distance to target: 26,000 light-years
Chapter 02
Our cosmic neighbourhood
One star. Eight worlds. Select a trajectory and fly to it.
Gyro tilt active · move cursor
Gas giant · 9.58 AU
Saturn
- Surface gravity
- 10.44 m/s²
- Orbital velocity
- 9.7 km/s
- Mean temp
- −140 °C
- Less dense than water. In a big enough ocean, it would float.
- Its rings span 280,000 km yet are mostly about ten metres thick.
Display notice: orbital distances and planetary sizes are normalised for display ergonomics. Real separations are far larger and not to scale. Physical metrics are published NASA values.
Chapter 03
Beyond our solar system
Three windows into the deep sky. Open the spectral inspector to read the chemistry of light that travelled for ages to reach you.
Alien atmospheres · 40 ly
TRAPPIST-1e
- Radius 0.92 R⊕
- Orbit 6.1 days
- Flux 0.66 S⊕
- Zone Habitable
Telemetry · candidate signatures
H₂O ▲CH₄ ▲CO₂ ▲
Macro-galactic core · 23 Mly
Whirlpool Galaxy · M51
Grand-design spiral arms, shaped by a close pass with its companion NGC 5195.
Chapter 04
Humanity's next frontier
Seventy years from a beeping sphere to a telescope reading the dawn of time.
Active · 1977
Voyager 1 & 2
Across the interstellar boundary
Both probes have crossed the heliopause and still whisper back on less power than a refrigerator bulb.
- Voyager 1
- 160+ AU out
Chapter 05
The unknown
Everything we can see makes up five percent of the universe. The rest is a question mark with a gravitational field.
Dark-matter halo · inferred from lensing, never seen
Visible matter 5% · Dark matter 27% · Dark energy 68%
Confirmed discoveries
Unresolved paradoxes
Confirmed
Expanding universe
Galaxies recede, redshift proportional to distance (Hubble, 1929).
Unresolved
Dark energy
Roughly 68% of the cosmos pushes expansion faster. Nobody knows what it is.
Confirmed
Cosmic microwave background
The afterglow of the Big Bang, mapped to one part in 100,000.
Unresolved
Cosmic inflation
A split-second burst of expansion that explains the CMB’s smoothness. Never directly seen.
Confirmed
Gravitational waves
LIGO heard two black holes merge in 2015, ripples a thousandth the width of a proton.
Unresolved
Dark matter
About 85% of all matter. Visible only through its gravity. No particle found.
Confirmed
Worlds beyond the Sun
More than 6,000 confirmed exoplanets, many in their stars’ habitable zones.
Unresolved
The Fermi paradox
With so many worlds and so much time, where is everybody?
Schwarzschild time-dilation engine
Drag toward the horizon
t′ = t · √(1 − rs / r)
r = 1.1995 rₛ15.23 million km
Earth clock (far away)
00:00:00Probe clock (near hole)
00:00:00Time dilation factor √(1 − rₛ/r)
0.4078
One hour aboard the probe equals 2.5 hours back on Earth.
Static observer model · hovering probe, black hole of 4.3 million solar masses.
Chapter 06 · The pale blue dot
One universe. Endless questions.
From here, borders vanish and the atmosphere is a film thinner than a coat of paint. Everyone you have ever loved, every war and every song, happened on this single speck. It is fragile, and it is the only home we have ever known.
Sources · Planetary fact sheets: NASA Solar System Exploration · Mission data: NASA, ESA, JPL-Caltech · Webb & Hubble observations: ESA / STScI · Renderings are procedural artistic interpretations, not photographs.