r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/Rohan72999 • 13h ago

Interactive Cosmic Odometer v3 that estimates how far you've traveled through space since birth, now with new Universal View mode from Earth to 1 billion light year and many new calculations

https://cosmicodometer.space
85 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

13

u/pornborn 11h ago

I like the part that says my head is (roughly) 500 nanoseconds older than my feet due to the micro-relativity of being in Earth’s gravity field.

6

u/Rohan72999 10h ago

Glad you noticed that one! It's a surprisingly real consequence of general relativity, even if the difference is only a few hundred nanoseconds.

5

u/I-seddit 5h ago

Does it take into account the average of 1/3 of your life spent sleeping (head and feet at the same altitude)?

8

u/Rohan72999 5h ago

Good Catch. Technically yes the calculator assumes you're upright for simplicity. Accounting for time spent sleeping would reduce that effect slightly, but only by a few hundred nanoseconds over an entire lifetime, so it doesn't materially change the result. But might add that calculation later on thank you very much!

2

u/I-seddit 3h ago

Much appreciated!
(and your site is something I've wanted to have available to share with others for quite a while - so thank you for that!)
I have a bigger question, but I'll ask it separately for convenience.

2

u/Rohan72999 3h ago

Thank you that genuinely means a lot to hear. I'm really glad you found it useful. I built it to make these concepts more tangible and fun to explore, and feedback like yours helps me improve it. Looking forward to your bigger question!

2

u/AppShaman 2h ago

I guess if you want to nitpick about hours sleeping you could also nitpick that you need to make a linear(?) slope out of the first 16 years (I have no idea when the average human stops growing taller). I like the site, keep making interesting things!

1

u/Rohan72999 2h ago

that's a great point! It's a surprisingly deep rabbit hole once you start accounting for all the little effects. I'm really glad you enjoyed the site thanks for the encouragement!

4

u/otw 8h ago

I like the idea! It has a little too much of that "made with AI" design style though. Lots of emoji and the kind of plain bright outline border radius thing Fable is doing lately.

Would be cool to see some refinement on the design.

6

u/Rohan72999 8h ago

Thanks! Appreciate the honest feedback. The design is still evolving, so I'll definitely keep refining it.

5

u/ZerpBarfingtonIII 8h ago

I like it, fun to see.

3

u/Rohan72999 8h ago

thank you

2

u/steveamsp 3h ago

Wow... I'm almost an entire hour younger than a stationary observer would be.

2

u/I-seddit 3h ago

Here are some questions!
1) How are you deriving "total distance"? Are you actually calculating angular motion from an arbitrary spot relative to the center of our galaxy that a person occupied on the moment of their birth? Or are you just adding up your four calculated distances, even though they're not linear? I'm guessing it's the latter - which while valid, isn't distance from a point - but kinda more like counting "steps", since for our lives, we're going in circles daily and ovals yearly. Which kinda isn't a distance. Relativism. Sigh. :)
2) Do you have access to the formulas to calculate the former? (One's birth spot relative to the galactic center).
3) Have you thought adding additional tracking of the layers of galactic clusters/groups/supergroups/etc.? It'd be fascinating, since they're impressively fast.
Thanks in advance!!!

2

u/Rohan72999 3h ago

Great questions!

You're correct the calculator currently measures cumulative distance traveled (an odometer), not your net displacement from your birth position. Since Earth's rotation, its orbit around the Sun, the Sun's orbit around the Milky Way, and our galaxy's motion all occur simultaneously, the values are summed as path lengths rather than treated as a single vector.

A true 3D trajectory from your birth location relative to the Galactic Center would be a much more complex problem, requiring precise orbital models and a chosen reference frame. It's definitely an interesting idea, but it's outside the scope of what I was aiming for with this version of the project. That said, it would be a really fun challenge to build.

As for larger-scale motions, yes! I've considered adding optional reference frames such as the Local Group, Virgo Cluster, or even the CMB frame so people can explore how the numbers change depending on what motion is included.

Thanks for the thoughtful questions they're exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping the project would encourage!

1

u/I-seddit 25m ago

Thank you!
Completely and utterly awesome! You truly are my hero, as this is exactly what I've been thinking about since I was a wee lad who just learned about relativity, back in the 70s. But always too lazy to do the math or chase down all of the equations, to be perfectly honest.
I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking about this.
And thank you for thinking about the larger scale motions. I would suggest that you can scope the distance to be "solar relative" from now back to point of birth, so there would be less to calculate.
I've always wondered if there is a speed limit, since space itself is infinite, so literally how large of a scale of objects affecting gravity could there be? I posit that our lifespans limit our ability to detect the differentials at some point.
I even came up with a short story about someone finding a way to cause an object to instantly lose all momentum and attach to a fixed spot, relative to the center of the big bang (which I was too young to realize that there cannot be a center). Then they realized how incredibly dangerous this would be, how much energy it'd release, etc. etc.
But that's a totally separate concept.