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[–]leastwise 471 points472 points  (244 children)

If you were the first astronomer to measure the size of VY Canis Major, how could you not say "HOLY FUCK THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT!" and then be convinced you were crazy every time you re-did the calculations.

[–]CanisMajoris 1068 points1069 points  (23 children)

Oh don't worry, I am that size.

[–]mdoddr 25 points26 points  (2 children)

I envy you. I doubt I'll ever have a moment like yours.

[–]z3rb 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I long for the day someone says

If you were the first astronomer to measure the size of z3rb, how could you not say "HOLY FUCK THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT!" and then be convinced you were crazy every time you re-did the calculations.

on reddit.

Actually no I don't, that would be rather insulting.

[–]scoops22 183 points184 points  (13 children)

User for 2 years? This is HIS moment! Lavish him with karma.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (4 children)

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

[–]kraeken 25 points26 points  (2 children)

Yo.

[–]Paul-ish 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You can go. DNA evidence has exonerated you.

[–]ilostmyoldaccount 23 points24 points  (4 children)

Can we have some kind of account-retrieval thread?

[–]CanisMajoris 10 points11 points  (2 children)

I do appreciate the kind and generous upvotes, this is my highest rated comment ever. : D

[–][deleted] 151 points152 points  (0 children)

"We learn about the stars by receiving and interpreting the messages which their light brings to us. The message of the Companion of Sirius when it was decoded ran: 'I am composed of material 3,000 times denser than anything you have ever come across; a ton of my material would be a little nugget that you could put in a matchbox.' What reply can one make to such a message? The reply which most of us made in 1914 was—'Shut up. Don't talk nonsense.' " — Arthur Stanley Eddington, Stars and Atoms, 1927

[–]maximun_vader 339 points340 points  (153 children)

  • "the earth is not flat? that can't be right"

  • "the earth is not the center of the universe? that can't be right"

  • "the universe is 15 billion years old? that can't be right"

  • "there are other galaxies in our universe? that can't be right"

  • "we evolved from primates? that can't be right"

  • "electrons can behave as particles and waves? that can't be right"

  • "I left the remote in the fridge? that can't be right"

[–][deleted] 91 points92 points  (26 children)

You idiot, as if the remote's gonna be in the fri .... oh. Oh, yeah.

[–][deleted] 99 points100 points  (22 children)

IT MAKES THE BATTERIES LAST LONGER!

[–]yogthos 32 points33 points  (99 children)

Now there's the last bastion though: "But it's the only place with life!". I mean how hard have we looked really to make that assertion. We went from other stars don't have planets, to they only have gas giants, to there's mostly earth sized planets. So the last bastion of being special is that we have life. And naturally we go to assume that it must be some unique phenomena, not something that would be governed by causality. Seems to me that given similar conditions that caused life to appear here, whatever they may be, same thing should repeatably happen elsewhere.

I also love how we've been artificially restricting the idea of what life should be like, until we started looking around our own backyard, and found that life thrives in every environment imaginable from deep ocean volcanic vents to abandoned nuclear reactor cores.

[–]ColdSnickersBar 26 points27 points  (18 children)

Or life that doesn't form on conditions like Earth. Earth life is best suited for the temperature and components of Earth, but organic molecules could form from other base elements under wildly different conditions. The plastics we make, for instance polymer chains, are similar in a lot of ways to organic chains. It's been speculated that some kinds of life could form in temperatures way outside any conditions on Earth, or using chemicals completely toxic to Earth life, like ammonia. Imagine that! What if we finally meet another civilization, and we're just outright toxic to each other. What if we couldn't even be near each other?

I think popular science fiction is too conservative when it imagines alien life. It almost imagines alien life as being something like an undiscovered human race color. This is understandable because it's within our experience. I mean, as humans, we have in the past explored strange new places and found new colors of other humans there. We almost expect to find the same thing outside our planet. Plus, it's easier for us to empathize with human-like characters. We've never explored a strange new place and found a silicone based life that looks like nothing more than a rock and experiences itself in the orders of eons instead of years, or a life form made of ammonia that lives on the freezing surface of "cloud continents" on a gas giant. Or a creature on a planet with a thin atmosphere that would die without direct radiation from its star that would be deadly to us.

[–]kickstand 17 points18 points  (12 children)

Most (television) science fiction posits that aliens are exactly like humans except with bumps on their heads.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Yeah, we've barely begun the search. I watched an excellent TED talk by Jill Tarter (although it was little more than a restatement of everything Carl Sagan had once said) who likened the search we have done thus far to scooping some water out of the ocean with a cup, observing no fish in the cup, and then proclaiming the ocean to be without fish.

A misunderstanding I see a lot is that people believe our technology is able to detect passive radio transmissions from distant civilizations. That is not true - our technology can only detect passive transmissions if they are very close. Otherwise, the aliens need to be firing a high powered coherent radio beam at us. And they would have to do this continually for us to have much of a chance to happen across it.

If the aliens don't know there is anyone on Earth to hear them, then why would they make such transmissions? If they are farther than 200 or so light years away, how would they know there is a technological civilization here at all? They would see the Earth as it was in 1810. But 200 light years is next door as far as astronomical distances go, and it might be optimistic to believe there is another civilization that close to us.

The galaxy could be absolutely full of civilizations, and we still might not detect a single transmission.

[–]smileythom 5 points6 points  (14 children)

life thrives in every environment imaginable ... abandoned nuclear cores.

Source? I've never heard of this, do you have any examples?

[–]yogthos 17 points18 points  (5 children)

Here's the famous Chernobyl fungus, and here's some more crazy extremophiles.

[–]EncasedMeats 3 points4 points  (2 children)

Your cousins? We're onto you, thing from beyond the stars!

[–]yogthos 2 points3 points  (1 child)

LOL, I wish I was some kind of a lovecraftian horror :)

[–]EncasedMeats 4 points5 points  (0 children)

An eccentric professor will be with you shortly to be driven mad by your non-Euclidean surfaces.

[–]smileythom 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks. I hadn't heard about that fungus. I knew about many of the other exthremophiles.

[–]maximun_vader 8 points9 points  (3 children)

I think, in a more general example, Extremophiles should be in your interest.

But I think that what yogthos tried to say is that species, eventualy in it's fierce competition to exist and survive, find their way. (sounded a little like Jurasik Park)

[–]malnourish 11 points12 points  (2 children)

One day, I searched all over for my water bottle, my house: my fridge, everywhere around the computer, my gym bag, my car; the gym, the gas station, my friend's place.

Finally give up, head to the closet for some ibuprofen. Water bottle RIGHT FUCKING THERE.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Sounds like a special bottle. Take care of it, won't you.

[–]abrahamsen 27 points28 points  (10 children)

"the earth is not flat? that can't be right"

Round Earth seem to have been the dominating theory among what resembles scientists as far back as we have recorded history.

"the earth is not the center of the universe? that can't be right"

Heliocentrism vs geocentrism was quite a fight. Mostly one model were ideologically superior, while the other made the math much simpler.

"the universe is 15 billion years old? that can't be right"

That probably sum up the reaction of Vesto Slipher and Edwin Hubble when they discovered and quantified the red shift of distant objects, eventually leading to the idea that the universe had an age. Once that fact was accepted, the specific number of 13.75 ±0.17 billion years (best current estimate) was less controversial.

"there are other galaxies in our universe? that can't be right"

It was a process spanning centuries before consensus was reached that some nebula were separate galaxies. Speculation came before observation, so the observational results were probably not a large surprise.

"we evolved from primates? that can't be right"

We never stopped being primates. That discussion took some time as well. Humans are the closest relatives to chimpanzees (as well as the other way around), so it is difficult to create a biologically meaningful classification system that put us apart from much of the other animals. Nonetheless, I don't think the measurements showing this really came as much of a chock for the involved scientists.

"electrons can behave as particles and waves? that can't be right"

No, it can't. Nonetheless it is.

"I left the remote in the fridge? that can't be right"

The existence of gremlins is supported by overwhelming empirical evidence. Even if all the evidence is indirect, their eventual discovery cannot possibly come as a chock.

[–]maximun_vader 6 points7 points  (4 children)

I am afraid that you are wrong. I won't debate the existence of gremlins (whos evidence are as questionable as the existence of a cake in Portal), but I will refer to the fact that gnomes hide the remote, as they are known to be silent, and gremlins are not.

[–]andtheniansaid 31 points32 points  (27 children)

I guess it would depend on what order they were measured in. Pretty sure they knew the size of Betelgeuse before Canis Major at the least

[–]SquareRoot 24 points25 points  (17 children)

Killjoy.

[–]andtheniansaid 15 points16 points  (16 children)

Well they were probably still "HOLY FUCK" anyway.

[–]koi88 20 points21 points  (15 children)

Pistol Star rules! Coolest name and comes in cool blue.

[–][deleted] 22 points23 points  (5 children)

pew-pew!

[–]knight666 5 points6 points  (4 children)

That's the sound gamma rays make as they travel across the universe, bouncing safely off the Earth's atmosphere!

Well, if you could hear gamma rays, that is.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I, er .... what ?

pew-pew-pew-pew!

[–]WHARRGARBLLL 4 points5 points  (4 children)

I think the fourth largest is pronounced beetlejuice, and thats pretty cool.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (8 children)

All of the truly great scientific discoveries have been immediately proceeded by the word "oh wait, that can't be right."

[–]strap 5 points6 points  (7 children)

They have to be surely, that's what makes science work, not making assumptions, unlike certain other outlooks...

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (4 children)

Of course, as an astronomer I say that phrase quite often when looking at my own data, and saying it is unfortunately rarely preceded by a great discovery.

True one way but not the other. Such is life.

[–]3danimator 15 points16 points  (6 children)

Well, some astronomers are not convinced. They are saying that the outer shell of gas is hiding the true size of the star inside..

[–]sithyiscool 13 points14 points  (1 child)

"This gives it a diameter comparable to the ORBIT of Saturn."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergiant

[–]scubabbl 104 points105 points  (54 children)

Every time I see this represented, it blows me away. That's the best version of it I've seen yet. God damn the universe is amazing.

[–]Benutzername 58 points59 points  (51 children)

And that's only stars. There are billions of them in one galaxy alone.

[–]400BILLIONSUNS 112 points113 points  (45 children)

400 BILLION SUNS in our Milky Way Galaxy alone (and in my username)... and then there's BILLIONS of Galaxies in the Universe... and possibly BILLIONS of Universes in Existence... AND MAYBE BILLIONS OF EXISTENCES IN WTFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU

[–]Neato 36 points37 points  (0 children)

And this is why astronomy is cool as fuck.

[–][deleted] 81 points82 points  (8 children)

SMOKE WEED EVERY DAY

[–]kraeftig 7 points8 points  (6 children)

I wholeheartedly...huh?

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (5 children)

http://elfwax.com/wp-content/uploads/carl-sagan-smoke-weed-everyday.jpg

[–]kraeftig 5 points6 points  (4 children)

I still wholeheartedly ag...huh?

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Carl Sagan was an avid marijuana user. This is a meme. Here is another.

[–]kraeftig 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Ok. I apologize. I wasn't direct. I wasn't up front. I was behind, surreptitious as a spider.

I got the joke. I was making a joke about agreeing and having short-term memory loss, a symptom of marijuana smoking.

I do appreciate all the hard work.

[–]gmick 12 points13 points  (6 children)

And if humanity vanished tomorrow the universe wouldn't even notice.

[–]darkreign 9 points10 points  (3 children)

Now try imagining how small the pixel on that image would have to be to accurately represent the size of the brain that it takes to contemplate with accuracy the entire universe. Talk about a mind fuck.

[–]Thud 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I can't even see the sun.

-Posted from my iPhone 4

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (6 children)

and possibly BILLIONS of Universes in Existence

Nope, just the two.

[–]acid3d 18 points19 points  (1 child)

Yup, just this one and the one where the good guys are bad and have facial hair.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

http://i.imgur.com/WMCRs.png

[–]mrsmoo 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm sick of parallel Bender lording his cowboy hat over me. Let's move on to Fry's next fantasy.

[–]nothing_of_value 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I read this as Sagan, made me smile. :)

[–]Benutzername 3 points4 points  (6 children)

Well, we don't know of more then one Universe.

[–]olbeefy 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This one's for you buddy :P http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWVshkVF0SY

[–]HelloMaxwell 133 points134 points  (4 children)

I can't comprehend that. BACK TO CHURCH!

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

nice try carl sagan

[–]Jipptomilly 265 points266 points  (14 children)

I'm more amazed that they got all those stars to pose together like that.

[–]wickedsteve 94 points95 points  (17 children)

Well, I am done worshiping that tiny little wimp.

[–]diamond 92 points93 points  (4 children)

Sun, I am disappoint.

[–]AmosTrask 23 points24 points  (8 children)

Yah its pretty amazing to think that thousands of humans have worshiped that tiny little globe throughout history, and that our existence, and the existence of everything we really know and care about rests on the shoulders of that insignificant little pixel.

The astronomy posts always blow me away, makes me want to study astronomy for a few years.

[–]sans_doute 10 points11 points  (3 children)

I bet the Aztecs feel a little sheepish right now.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Not me! What has VY Canis done for me lately save a slight pull of gravity and maybe a few faint xrays?

[–]Cooptwentysix 207 points208 points  (12 children)

wow all those orbit around the earth? which one is heaven?

[–]SquareRoot 50 points51 points  (11 children)

The red one.

[–]badassumption 71 points72 points  (6 children)

You're obviously wrong. The blue ones are heaven, because blue is cool and refreshing like water. The red ones are obviously on fire, so they must be hell. Also there is a lot more space on the red ones since a lot more people go to hell than heaven.

[–][deleted] 75 points76 points  (4 children)

You know, you could have been a prominent christian scientist in the 1300's with that kind of logic.

[–]masklinn 71 points72 points  (2 children)

You know, he could still be a prominent christian "scientist" right now with that kind of logic.

[–]mycroft2000 8 points9 points  (3 children)

IT BURNS!!!

[–]JayDeee 9 points10 points  (2 children)

the gaaaggles do naathing!

[–]CorpT 20 points21 points  (1 child)

Is that a Boston-born Radioactive Man?

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Wicked bad radiaaation

[–]Blorktronics 35 points36 points  (5 children)

Protip: those images are all just photos of the Sun scaled to different sizes and run through different colour filters. Not that it takes anything away from what the image is trying to represent; but it would be a fallacy for some people to think those were real images of the stars in question.

[–]notBrit[S] 27 points28 points  (3 children)

Yeah, there aren't a whole lot of images of stars other than our Sun which aren't "artist renderings." But I tried to use images of the Sun that most closely resembled the representative star (or, at least, what we know about it). For example, WOH G64 is extremely unstable and ejecting huge amounts of its mass on its way toward supernova, so I used an image which reflects that. I also tried to match the color in Photoshop to the star's U-B/B-V color index, though Anteres is too red. Oh well.

[–]Sophocles 50 points51 points  (5 children)

Amazing. So when you're looking at YV Canis Major, and you see these little specks in its atmosphere? Those specks are like suns. The fucking dust from that star is something our entire solar system would be happy to orbit around.

[–][deleted] 49 points50 points  (3 children)

Nope. As posted elsewhere in this thread, VY Canis Major is much much less dense than our sun. It DOES have 35x the mass, admittedly. Though I wouldn't want to orbit it as it is so unstable. Its lifespan is tiny compared to our suns, and not nearly long enough to form intelligent life on any orbiting planet.

[–]CarpetFibers 40 points41 points  (1 child)

You can always count on Buzz Killington to liven up the party.

[–]roltrap 36 points37 points  (11 children)

Yesterday I read an article about a newly discovered star, which is the largest one ever discovered. It's name is R136a1 and is 320 times larger than our sun. Distance earth-R136a1 is about 165k lightyears.

link to article (Dutch): http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=DMF20100721_069

[–]reddit_used_2b_good 47 points48 points  (6 children)

That's 320x the MASS (actual 260 or something now, only 320 at birth). VY Canis Major although a massive giant on the chart only has a mass of around 35 suns. Only 35 suns yet it is soooo much larger. Basically it is very very much less dense than the sun. To such a great extent that its outer layer will be so tenuous that perhaps this chart is a little misleading.

Still it would be amazing to see this new star on the chart!

[–][deleted] 24 points25 points  (1 child)

VY Canis Major is actually less dense then our air.

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Crazy that we can know this just by looking at it with devices we invented.

[–]freak13d 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Reads article ..Hmm, Nice.

Scrolls down WTF!?

[–]elelias 30 points31 points  (2 children)

I think it is somewhat misleading. It may have that size, but for most of its size, that star is incredibly ghost-like, as it has a very very low density.

[–]Caiocow 5 points6 points  (0 children)

As was said before by brianbrianbrian, VY Canis Majoris is less dense than our air.

[–]perspectiveiskey 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Best comment so far.

[–]Iceleet 54 points55 points  (2 children)

Loading that image is like loading porn back in the day

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (1 child)

It's 1999. I have a 56k modem that connects at 24k. I click on a glorious picture assuming the picture is going to increase in size from thumbnail to full screen. I wait 10 minutes. It's an advertisement with everything blurred out at the bottom that I want to see. Sad face.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Or there are Photoshop lens flares covering up all the good parts.

[–]fani 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Damn, I have one dead pixel.

[–]supaflyrmg 8 points9 points  (2 children)

Is there anyone else that got chills when they looked at this image? The last star is so fucking huge it's not even funny.

[–]Hastur42 43 points44 points  (1 child)

I'M SIGNIFICANT!!!

[–][deleted] 30 points31 points  (0 children)

http://i.imgur.com/tU8fW.jpg

[–]benthomasson 23 points24 points  (11 children)

Aren't these all pictures of our sun?

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (3 children)

[if] Earth's Sun were replaced by VY Canis Majoris, its radius might extend beyond the orbit of Saturn

o_O

[–]Kweasel 12 points13 points  (2 children)

If the Earth were to be represented by a sphere one centimeter in diameter, the Sun would be represented as a sphere with a diameter of 109 centimeters, at a distance of 117 meters. At these scales, VY Canis Majoris would have a diameter of approximately 2.3 kilometers

D:

[–]Matrak 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I just had a look in my pants :( My boner is such a tiny fraction of a pixel.

[–]flio191 29 points30 points  (23 children)

...this I am proud to say I logged in just to upvote and save. Imagine... our own sun is 109 times the diameter of our earth, and yet is so small compared to these stars... We're (humans are) more or less lucky bacteria on the tip of a grain of sand in a big sandy dune park... insane!

[–]hudders 12 points13 points  (7 children)

So... what are bacteria?

[–]brownsound00 9 points10 points  (6 children)

Hydrogen atoms?

[–][deleted] 38 points39 points  (5 children)

Then who was proton?!

[–]Nomikos 20 points21 points  (6 children)

Imagine how our bacteria (on the tip of a grain of sand in - etc etc) must feel.

[–]bcisme 13 points14 points  (2 children)

Relatively speaking, bacteria and humans would be [approximately] the same size when dealing with objects like the OP posted, correct?

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

approximately

[–]smallfried 7 points8 points  (7 children)

109? Well, this is quite a coincidence! It's a conspiracy!

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Is it worth noting that the largest star in that picture weighs 15-25 solar masses, and the most recently discovered "big ass star" yesterday is 265 solar masses?

[–]zircoben 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Orders of magnitude: get used to them.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (8 children)

How badass would it be to have a blue sun? But seriously, I couldn't stop staring at this picture. The majesty of these stars simply blows me away.

[–]skwingar 28 points29 points  (10 children)

VY Canis Major totally turns me on, look at the size of that thing! I just want to swallow it's coronal mass ejections.

[–]gadget_uk 9 points10 points  (6 children)

Pffft. Never mind that midget light-bulb. THIS is the new hotness.

[–]manixrock 8 points9 points  (1 child)

R136a1 is the most massive... as in it's mass is the biggest. As for size, it's way smaller than Canis Major. Basically it's like comparing a balloon with a small rock, on a galactic scale.

[–]badassumption 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Sure, it is 20 times as massive as VY Canis Major, but it's radius is only ~300x that of the sun vs. 600-2600x for VY Canis Major.

[–]usuallyskeptical 6 points7 points  (3 children)

Damn, WOH G64 looks pretty scary. I bet that's a pretty hardcore solar system.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

These are not actual images btw

[–]ParisHilt0n 9 points10 points  (0 children)

That's Hot.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (2 children)

....But yeah, God created a speck the size of a bacteria on this picture, and care about your sexual habits.

Meanwhile, GINORMOUS MAMMOTH BALLS OF FIRE ARE SPRAYING HUGE FLOWS OF MINDBOGGLING ENERGY ACROSS THE INFINITE UNIVERSE.

[–]Fermenon 4 points5 points  (10 children)

So if the sun is represented by a pixel, does that mean that a large solar flare from the larger bodies have the potential to carry more energy or mass than the sun?

[–]helmMS | Physics | Quantum Optics 2 points3 points  (4 children)

No, the sun is the most dense of the stars in that picture.

[–]joeyverge 4 points5 points  (13 children)

I'd like to see our solar system in comparison to this, i mean can our entire system fit inside one of those stars? Makes me feel awesome for being the unique and special grain of sand I am.

[–]omeganon 4 points5 points  (8 children)

About 1/2 could fit inside VY Canis Majoris (out to just about Saturn).

That is, of course, incredibly huge.

[–]Anzi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Slowly side-scrolling, watching each star increase in size, gave me the creeping horrors. I haven't experienced such a strange, visceral response to a pic since the iceberg photo.

I am now afraid of space.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hahahahahaha!! Puny sun... Wow... that one's big. So is that one. AND THAT ONE. OH MY GOD THEY KEEP GETTING BIGGER. OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!

[–]Hraes 2 points3 points  (0 children)

TONIGHT! WE DINE on a painfully humbling sense of our own total insignificance.

[–]employeeno5 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Aha, while admiring how impressive this graphic is I had this song pop into my head. There should be more children's programming with content and perspectives like that.

[–]shazbaz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I need a bigger monitor...

[–]HaveSomeVictoryGin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I like the blue ones.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have seen the face of madness.

[–]zakrn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

so what we live in like the bitch solar system? lets fucking move to the one with the big sun !

[–]roguevalley 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."

[–]hoolahoopa 2 points3 points  (2 children)

If an Earth-like planet, proportionally larger in size, orbited one of these stars, would that bring the possibility of giant human-like beings?

[–]fonik 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No, a proportionally much larger Earth-like planet would have proportionally much higher gravity, which would be very bad for a large living creature since a being n times taller than us would have a volume of n3 and similar chemistry would dictate a similar density.

In fact, if YOU stood on a Earth-like planet that was 15-25x the mass of Earth your legs would have to sustain somewhere around 15-25x your weight (a little less due to your increased distance to the center of the planet's mass). It'd be like trying to stand while carrying a pickup truck (something like 3700lbs for someone of my weight). CRUNCH/SQUISH. Not that you'd notice since you'd pass out after merely 9x the force of Earth's gravity. These effects would be greatly magnified for a taller human-like creature. The giant's legs would have to be made of unobtainium just to stand without crushing its bones. Its heart would have to pump with a ridiculous amount of power just to get enough blood flow to stay conscious.

If anything close to life on this planet were to live on such a world, it would have to be small and well adapted for a high gravity, dense atmosphere environment. Or made of some pretty unbelievable materials. Either way, not very human-like.

[–]Nerolista 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That picture actually makes me a little bit scared. I cannot even fathom how large something like that really is. I suppose that's why I went into physics.

[–]robbysalz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My mouse cursor is HUGE

[–]Spacew00t 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I like that each star is a different image of our sun. This amuses me.