Ring Nebula

Meanwhile, your friend, who's getting 10 times smaller every second, is passing the size of, you know, um, the, the great voids in the universe, um, superclusters like Laniakea where we are, our local group, galaxies, Andromeda, the Milky Way.

Eventually, after 10 seconds of this game, you are now as large as a neutrino, which is 2.8 yottameters across, and your friend is the size of the Ring Nebula, which is 1.3 light-years across.

[gentle music]

This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.

Mm-hmm.

You are both going to meet in the exact middle, and in that middle is the human egg cell, the cell we all come from.

Okay? So the human egg cell is not only exactly in between the Planck length and the observable universe, it's also exactly in between the size of a neutrino and the size of the Ring Nebula.

Okay.

Before we go, what should people actually go look at tonight?

If you've got a telescope, even a modest one, four inches or so, point it at the Ring Nebula tonight.

Look straight up after dark for Vega, the brilliant star practically overhead, and just below it you'll spot a neat little parallelogram of stars marking the constellation Lyra.

The Ring Nebula, cataloged as M57, sits right inside that parallelogram.

What are we actually looking at with that one?

It's the glowing, ghostly remnant of a dying Sun-like star.