Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/26/the-mind-boggling-size-of-the-largest-known-star-stephenson-2-18.html
…
12 Likes
also mind-boggling: The most massive star, R136a1 loses 321 trillion tons of material each second
(4:40 in the video)
11 Likes
Yo momma’s so fat she can fuse hydrogen!
20 Likes
This is a fun scale I found that does scaling in powers of ten, from the planck length to the observable universe. Just scroll in and out to move through the scales. Each object can be clicked on for a small info blurb.
10 Likes
Is it just the BBC cadence of the narrator or have we stumbled on an actual chapter of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? 
(wow, I really dislike that BBC website’s overall design…)
6 Likes
They should give it a better name: Chonk-1
14 Likes
Kurzgesagt is not the BBC. I like both of them but they are to the same. Do you have something you prefer?
So, our star is cooler
8 Likes
“I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to Stephenson 2-18.”
12 Likes
Hmph, not as big as dTrumph’s ego!
4 Likes
May I present Charles and Ray Eames - The absolute heroes of design thinking and visual communication (not to mention a shared life of creativity and joy).
4 Likes
I’m going to assume it’s named after Neal Stephenson because his books are also really, really big.
11 Likes
Yes, Kurzgesagt is basically the Hitchhiker’s Guide for realz
6 Likes
The most massive star, R136a1 loses 321 trillion tons of material each second
To put some context around that, it means that R136a1 spits out the equivalent of an Earth in lost mass every 7 months or so.
(assuming I haven’t lost too many decimal places along the way …)
3 Likes
Math checks out.
4 Likes
Here’s the self-paced version from Wait But Why: https://waitbutwhy.com/2020/09/universe.html
1 Like
An astronomer-colleague of mine put the size of stars like these into perspective: “the outer layers of those stars are closer to a vacuum than any ‘vacuum’ we can create in a lab.”
2 Likes
It was a pretty amateurish and boring presentation. Deserves the TL;DR award.
It took too long to read the video?
