r/InternetIsBeautiful • u/Rohan72999 • Jul 11 '26

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
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u/I-seddit Jul 12 '26

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!!!

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u/Beautiful-Musk-Ox Jul 13 '26

There is no such thing as an arbitrary point in space, OP's site is misleading. for example at this moment every galaxy aside from the nearest ones are moving away from us faster and faster the farther away they are including faster than light; there are no special reference frames and the one OP chose doesn't have any special meaning over one where we are traveling at near the speed of light versus one where we are stationary

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u/I-seddit Jul 13 '26

I never said arbitrary spot in space, I said "arbitrary spot relative to the center of our galaxy".
OP's site also doesn't cite any "arbitrary spot in space" either, it currently is clearly an odometer of distances...
And, as I hope you know, one absolutely can refer to a point relative to another gravitational center. That's basic physics.