Powers of 10 interactive. At least somehow, because this approach is much more graphical. Found on the page of camera-manufacturer Nikon, this site shows you scales of things in relation to each other - from the smallest speck of matter (atoms and smaller) to the largest planets and far beyond. Explanatory graphics will give you a real idea of your place on the planet - or indeed the universe.
Goto Universcale

And if you have never seen “Powers of Ten” by Ray and Charles Eames, please watch it now!

This post is not about ideas that can be realized right now. Instead I want to present some ideas that try to anticipate the next big paradigm shifts. Currently I’m reading a book by Ray Kurzweil called “The singularity is near” and the basic statement he makes can be summarized as: Everything changes and this change is accelerating constantly. This happens because new technologies create new methods to invent things. And every invention changes humankind. The underlying idea is that, if computational power continues to grow as predicted my Moore’s Law, then we’ll have the resources to create a simulation of the human brain by 2020. That doesn’t mean that the simulation will pass the Turing Test and exhibit intelligence, but if it does this invention may be the last one humans like us will ever need to make. After all, and as far as we know, the human brain shouldn’t be fundamentally different from a computer.

“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.” (Irving John Good 1965)

Whatever one may think of this concept of machine intelligence (which could only be the first step in the further evolution of humanity towards the “Intelligent Universe” as described by James Gardner) it is certainly a concept worth thinking about.

This is why I suggest a few articles and books for the interested reader:
1. The Law of Accelerating Returns an article by Ray Kurzweil
2. Biocosm: Intelligent Life Is the Architect of the Universe a book by James N. Gardner
3. Foreword to The Intelligent Universe an article by Ray Kurzweil
4. And, of course The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil, even if I haven’t finished reading it.

Even if it feels like science fiction sometimes I have to constantly remind myself that most of the things we take for granted today were science fiction 50 years ago…