If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system

Congratulations on making it this far.

Being a science and space nerd from an early age, I’ve looked at a lot of maps of the solar system over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed one as much as “If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system”.

It’s sort of a philosophical side-scroller game (with no point) based on science. Or, actually, it’s a nice essay, presented in a somewhat unusual form, on the difficulties we humans have wrapping our heads around things that aren’t of a human scale, like the solar system.

“Sorry, Humanity,” says Evolution. “What with all the jaguars trying to eat you, the parasites in your fur, and the never-ending need for a decent steak, I was a little busy. I didn’t exactly have time to come up with a way to conceive of vast stretches of nothingness.”

It’s fun and informative and definitely worth scrolling past all those zillions of miles of darkness to find the next snarky little remark or, if you’re really lucky, an actual planet :)

With so much emptiness, aren’t stars, planets, and people just glitches in an otherwise elegant and uniform nothingness, like pieces of lint on a black sweater?

(It also shows off some pretty shiny webdev tools and design, which made a different part of my nerdliness happy.)

Big thanks to Josh Broton for the pointer:

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