Size of Life
neal.fun
neal.fun
It reminded me of Operation Neptune (1991): each level starts with just one channel, probably percussion, and as you progress through the rooms it adds and removes more channels or sometimes switches to a different section of music. It is unfortunately all sharp cuts, no attempts at smoothing or timing instrument entry and exit. A couple of samples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LNaatyoQk is an hour of gameplay revelling in “the dynamic and sometimes beautiful music of Operation Neptune” using a Roland MT-32 MIDI synthesiser; and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPxEdQ4wx9s&list=PL3FC048B13... is the PCM files used on some platforms (if you want to compare that track with the MT-32, it starts at 28 minutes).
For anyone curious, you can actually play it here: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Super_Solvers_Operation_Ne...
So not exactly the same, but perhaps prototypical. I think Asteroids did as well.
The game speeding up as invaders are eliminated was an unintended consequence of the hardware running full speed to draw all 55 invaders. As invaders are eliminated the draw calls finish faster and the game speeds up. There is no code in the game to throttle the speed. The 2 Mhz 8080 is always drawing full speed. It's delightfully serendipitous this happens to ramp up the difficulty as you near the end of each level in such a compellingly perfect way. (https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/space-...)
I've watched some interviews with the game's programmer Tomohiro Nishikado and, although translated (so subject to garbling), he seems to confirm this was a 'happy accident'. He indicates he set the max number of invaders based on what the hardware could draw but there was no intent to have the speed ramp up. Of course, he noticed that it did this during play testing but decided to keep it that way. Arguably, it's one of the most compelling aspects of the game. Modern emulators have to add code game-specific code to limit the speed or the game plays too fast. Leaving no CPU cycles unused is the sign of an elegant design.
Tomorrow it should also be on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
And you're right, the music following the player's actions is common in games; we call it "adaptive music.
The idea was to have a single instrument (a cello) that builds upon itself, like the cells in an organism. It starts with a very minimalistic loop, and new layers of music are progressively added as the organisms grow in size.
Thanks for sharing Operation Neptune! I didn't know about it, but it's a great example of early adaptive game music.
Since some of you asked, here’s the soundtrack on Bandcamp: https://aleixramon.bandcamp.com/album/size-of-life-original-...
There you can download it in high quality, and it’s a pay-what-you-want: you can get it for free if you want, or pay what you feel like and support me. Either way, I’m happy that you enjoy it!
The music should also be on Spotify, Apple Music, and most music streaming services within the next 24h.
A bit about the process of scoring Size of Life:
I’ve worked with Neal before on a couple of his other games, including Absurd Trolley Problems, so we were used to working together (and with his producer—you’re awesome, Liz!). When Neal told me about Size of Life, we had an inspiring conversation about how the music could make the players feel.
The core idea was that it should enhance that feeling of wondrous discovery, but subtly, without taking the attention away from the beautiful illustrations.
I also thought it should reflect the organisms' increasing size—as some of you pointed out, the music grows with them. I think of it as a single instrument that builds upon itself, like the cells in an increasingly complex organism. So I composed 12 layers that loop indefinitely—as you progress, each layer is added, and as you go back, they’re subtracted. The effect is most clear if you get to the end and then return to the smaller organisms!
Since the game has an encyclopedia vibe to it, I proposed to go with a string instrument to give it a subtle “Enlightenment-era” and “cultural” feel. I was suspecting the cello could be a good instrument because of its range and expressivity.
Coincidentally, the next week I met the cellist Iratxe Ibaibarriaga at a game conference in Barcelona, where I’m based, and she immediately became the ideal person for it. She’s done a wonderful job bringing a ton of expressivity to the playing, and it’s been a delight to work with her.
I got very excited when Neal told me he was making an educational game—I come from a family of school teachers. I’ve been scoring games for over 10 years, but this is the first educational game I’ve scored.
In a way, now the circle feels complete!
(if anyone wants to reach out, feel free to do so! You can find me and all my stuff here: https://www.aleixramon.com/ )
The authors deserve our support. Buy them a coffee via the provided link.
Thank you for sharing this on HN.
Space Elevator: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45640226
This is a pretty common fear, just look up thalassophobia (or don't! sorry!)
(It's utterly brilliant but monstrous.)
Thank you!
all achievements.. and i made stacks on bitcoin
I hope he never stops making these art pieces - everything he creates brings joy, regardless of whether it's educational or funny or whimsical. I'm in awe of his creative output, his manner of communication, and his ability to steal hours of our time playing ridiculous little games that make us question the fundamentals of life and society.
He's right up there with XKCD in my mind.
--
This is probably the only time I'll use my super pedantic mode on Neal's work, and it's only because I love biology -
> DNA
> The genetic instructions for life
> 3.5 nanometers tall
DNA has a lot of dimensional metrics. It gets complicated. The people that study this stuff really care because it's essential for how our enzymes work, and small differences in spacing tolerances would totally break all of the machinery.
This "3.5 nm" figure is roughly the height of one turn of the helix for one form of DNA (B-DNA). The figure is showing multiple turns in the cartoon illustration.
In theory, you could create a polymer of infinite length (or height).
B-DNA is 34 Å per turn, with 10.5 bp per turn (table 1) :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6545/
> Blue Whale
> King of the animal kingdom, it is the largest animal to have ever lived. It can eat up to 40 million krill per day during peak feeding season.
Please fix this one, Neal! We don't know that the blue whale is the largest animal to have ever lived (even assuming we know we're just talking about earth).
Blue whales are perhaps the largest animal to have ever lived on earth. But we simply do not know. The fossil record is woefully incomplete.
We even have new papers coming up all the time that challenge this:
https://www.science.org/content/article/whale-whale-may-be-b...
Then refutations:
https://www.science.org/content/article/have-blue-whales-reg...
This is undoubtedly the last time the claim to largest will ever be challenged. Even if we dug up no new fossils, the estimations of previous finds change all the time as we learn more.
Also - what does "largest" mean? Mass? Length? Surface area?
It's okay to say that they're the largest (by some metric) that we know of. But it is not correct to say that they're the largest to have ever lived - at least as far as we know or could ever know. And by setting an absolute, inquiring minds memorize the point and stop wondering.
It's very probable that we'll never know the definitive answer to this.
It essentially starts the whole project with a weird take on "How long is a piece of string?"
> In theory, you could create a polymer of infinite length (or height).
Works pretty well in practice too.
This is a nitpick, but life on other planets wouldn't be called “animals”. Animal is a clade defined by common ancestry. The only way you could have an extraterrestrial animal is for it to have evolved on Earth and then migrated somehow, and I think we can fairly confidently rule that out.
Definitely worthy the scroll!
> Tyrannosaurus rex. One of the largest land predators ever, it had teeth the size of a banana
He argues that human perception of animal size is skewed because humans use themselves as a benchmark.
He takes a logarithmic approach to illustrate where humans actually fit within the overall scale of the animal kingdom. We are way larger than we think we are!
If you are looking at the ladybird (ladybug) with the amoeba to the left, the amoeba isn't an order of the magnitude smaller - it would actually be visible by the human eye (bigger than a grain of sand)? Indeed, the amoeba seems the same size as the ladybird's foot?
Similarly, this makes the bumblebee appear smaller than a human finger (the in the adjacent picture), which isn't the case?
Only the next row above it, with Pelomyxa, is indeed an amoeba and one that is very frequently encountered and which usually has sizes not much less than 1 millimeter and sometimes it can reach a size of a few mm.
The true amoebas are much more closely related to humans, than to xenophyophores (giant marine unicellular living beings) or to plants.
Besides the true amoebas there are also a few other kinds of unicellular eukaryotes with shape-shifting cells, e.g. foraminifera, radiolarians and others, but already in the first half of the 19th century it was recognized that those other groups change their shapes in a different way than the amoebas, so they were classified separately, even if the term "amoeboid cell" has always been used about any cell with variable shape.
The true amoebas are related to the group formed by animals and fungi, and there are some amoebas that have a simple form of multicellularity, so it is likely that some of the mechanisms needed for the evolution of multicellularity have been inherited from a common ancestor of animals, fungi and amoebae.
The multicellular or multinucleate amoebae that belong to Myxomycetes (one of the kinds of slime moulds) can reach much bigger sizes, e.g. a diameter of up to 1 meter, because they do not have the size limitation that exists for simple unicellular eukaryotes.
"Megaphragma mymaripenne is a microscopically sized wasp. At 200 μm in length, it is the third-smallest extant insect, comparable in size to single-celled organisms. It has a highly reduced nervous system, containing only 7400 neurons, several orders of magnitude fewer than in larger insects."
I never knew about these either.
> Eutelic organisms have a fixed number of somatic cells when they reach maturity, the exact number being relatively constant for any one species. This phenomenon is also referred to as cell constancy. Development proceeds by cell division until maturity; further growth occurs via cell enlargement only.
Most tardigrades are not much bigger than 100 micrometers.
Tardigrades, together with nematodes, rotifers, mites and a few more rarely encountered groups are among the smallest animals and they are smaller than many of the bigger among the unicellular eukaryotes. That is why they have been discovered only after the invention of the microscope.
The tardigrades have evolved towards smaller and smaller sizes very early, already during the Cambrian. It is interesting that they are segmented animals, like their relatives the arthropods and the velvet worms, but they have very few segments, because in order to achieve such a small size they have lost all intermediate segments, so the segments that now form their body were originally the segments of the head, and now they are followed immediately by the original segments of the tail, without the original body that connected the head to the tail. Thus they have been miniaturized by losing their body and becoming a walking head (the legs of the tardigrades are what in arthropods have become appendages of the mouth, e.g. mandibles and maxillae).
I'd suggest keeping the SI unit , or at least having both once we get to the level of inches.
Even with setting it to metric, it progresses through units based on the scale. I realize that scientists love to work in scientific notation, and progressing from nanometers to micrometers, mm, cm, and finally meters sort of follows that kind of logic. I wonder how it would feel if the whole thing was in constant units or at least there was an option for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_aphroditois
Thankfully they don't live on land.
So it was not a dangerous predator, though it could have been poisonous, like many modern millipedes.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-...
For example, Sequoia gigantea Sequoia is the largest tree and can be effectively compared to the annual plant shown above. Fertilization and the early growth to the seed stage are essentially similar, but because of the cambium and the possibility of secondary thickening, the size of the tree can increase enormously. As can be seen from Figure 1 in the text, the sequoia does not begin to set seed until it is sixty years old and eighty meters tall.
Fwiw, I've done a pinch-nail-hand-arms 1-10-100-1000 mm "body as size reference" a couple of times around 5ish. And a 1000x "micro view" "pinch is zoomed to arms size" "it's like a scale model or doll playset - everything zoomed together" world of "bacteria sprinkles, red blood cell candies (M&M minis or concave Smarties minis or Sweetarts - there's lots of cell candy analogs), hair poles, salt/sugar boxes". Stories of sitting on a grain of salt and eating... etc; pet eyelash mites. No idea if it actually worked.
I did some user-test videos, now only on archive.org.[1] Hmm... the "Arms, hands" video there now doesn't seem to play inline? - but does wget'ed and browsered. :/
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221007220513/www.clarifyscienc...
And I know this also likely not Neil's idea of fun, and mostly the silly EU rules that are to blame but still, dialogs without a directly available "refuse all" are the worst
> Created by Neal Agarwal
> Illustrations by Julius Csotonyi
> Production by Liz Ryan
> Music & SFX by Aleix Ramon
> Cello performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga
Beautiful work.
Thanks for the laugh!
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221007220513/http://www.clarif...
"females typically stand 115 cm (45 in) tall and weigh around 37 kg (82 lb), while adult males stand 137 cm (54 in) tall and weigh 75 kg (165 lb). The tallest orangutan recorded was a 180 cm (71 in)."
That's much shorter than the human at 1.7m or 5'7". From just those numbers, you might think that a human would weigh more than a grizzly or take one in a fight: But when a bear stands on its hind legs, it's 2.4m/8' tall and can be 800 lbs, I'd have put a grizzly way further to the right.
This is an interesting fact.
Our local parks department has several annual events where they ask for volunteers to help perform benthic macroinvertebrate surveys. It basically amounts to meeting up at a local park with a couple people in waders dragging special nets along the bottom, dumping scoops of material into buckets and large, shallow, white trays, and others sitting at picnic tables with spoons, magnifying glasses, and muffin tins sorting out the critters that get caught in the nets.
The cool part is that at the end, you can score the creek based on the quantity and types of larvae that you find: Caddisfly, mayfly, and stonefly larvae are very sensitive to factors like runoff from agriculture and road salt, sediment, water oxygenation, and other factors, beetles, crayfish, dragonflies, and scuds are moderately tolerant, while leeches, worms, midges, and flies will grow in anything. Thousands of these surveys happen every year, so you can compare the relative frequency and quantity of various species and determine the relative health of the stream.
I don't know how many tardigrades you'll find just scooping 4-8mm nymphs and larvae by eye, but I've brought my microscope to a couple and put random droplets of water under a cover and slide: there are an astonishing number of tiny critters swimming around at any zoom level.
Nymphs are larger (that's why they call them "macro" invertebrates), but it's always good to have at least a magnifying glass if not a loupe or microscope on site.
> [Loupes] generally have higher magnification than a magnifying glass, and are designed to be held or worn close to the eye.
A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites. :)
I did a side project that helps with comparisons, but in a rather different way (e.g. how many African elephants does something weigh). Not as slick as this site, but someone might find it useful:
(function() {
let direction = 'right'; // Start by going right
let intervalId;
function getCurrentAnimalName() {
const animalDiv = document.querySelector('.animal-name');
return animalDiv ? animalDiv.textContent.trim() : '';
}
function pressKey(keyCode) {
const event = new KeyboardEvent('keydown', {
key: keyCode === 37 ? 'ArrowLeft' : 'ArrowRight',
keyCode: keyCode,
code: keyCode === 37 ? 'ArrowLeft' : 'ArrowRight',
which: keyCode,
bubbles: true
});
document.dispatchEvent(event);
}
function autoScroll() {
const currentName = getCurrentAnimalName();
if (direction === 'right') {
pressKey(39); // Right arrow
if (currentName === 'Pando Clone') {
console.log('Reached Pando Clone, switching to left');
direction = 'left';
}
} else {
pressKey(37); // Left arrow
if (currentName === 'DNA') {
console.log('Reached DNA, switching to right');
direction = 'right';
}
}
}
// Start the interval
intervalId = setInterval(autoScroll, 3000);
// Log start message and provide stop function
console.log('Auto-scroll started! To stop, call: stopAutoScroll()');
// Expose stop function globally
window.stopAutoScroll = function() {
clearInterval(intervalId);
console.log('Auto-scroll stopped');
};
})(); {
const s = window.scroller = {}
const press = (key, code) => () =>
document.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent('keydown', {
key: key, keyCode: code,
which: key, code: code, bubbles: true
}));
const step = () => {
const div = document.querySelector('.animal-name')
const name = div?.textContent.trim()
if (name === 'Pando Clone') s.dir = s.left
if (name === 'DNA') s.dir = s.right
s.dir()
}
s.left = press(37, 'ArrowLeft')
s.right = s.dir = press(39, 'ArrowRight')
s.start = (ms) => s.ival = setInterval(step, ms)
s.stop = () => clearInterval(s.ival)
}
scroller.start(5000)1. https://healthland.time.com/2013/06/21/theyre-alive-harveste... 2. https://agriculture.institute/food-chemistry-and-physiology/...
Star Size Comparison 3, simply a stunning visualization.
[0] https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=pUF5esTscZI
Even if you've never taken a mild psychedelic, this video hits in a similar manner (as sober metaphor).
----
I still drive with Neal.fun's Internet Roadtrip (same OP link author), every time I'm out in my workshop.
It's the second or third time I see this "managed by Google compliant with IAB" (note: not with GDPR)
He previously did a game "Infinite Craft" which leveraged Llama models. However, I was only able to find an outdated blog from 2019.
https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems/twi...
We really dont need playStore and appStore to run beautiful things like this.
Great work -> the minimalist UI, art and music fits amazingly.
One thing I noticed: the site's images fail to load if the brave adblocker is on
I always thought that the best we could do for targeted drug delivery was an adenovirus. But after seeing that parasite being only slightly bigger than a red blood cell, I think we can do better...
I do like the visualization.
http://famousredwoods.com/hyperion/
Nevermind!
"The exact location of Hyperion is nominally secret but is available via internet search.[12] However, in July 2022, the Redwood Park superintendent closed the entire area around the tree, citing "devastation of the habitat surrounding Hyperion" caused by visitors. Its base was trampled by the overuse and as a result ferns no longer grow around the tree.[13]
Measures to protect the Hyperion tree were officially implemented in 2022 when the National Park Service (NPS) closed public access to its location in Redwood National Park.[14][15] Anyone who gets too close could face up to six months in jail and a $5,000 maximum fine.[13][16][17]"
When music is playing the tool tip is "unmute" which is a verb. It should either be "mute" (to indicate what clicking will do) or "unmuted" (adjective) indicating the current state. Similarly, when the music is muted the tool-tip should either be "muted" or "unmute".
I'm not sure _which_ is wanted (verb or adjective) because the ruler tool-tip uses "Hide Ruler" and "Show Ruler" (verb), while the units tool-tip uses "Units: imperial" and "Units: Metric" (adjective). The info tool-tip ("Info") is also an adjective.
For consistency, I'd use a verb-phrase in all the tool tips:
- "Show info"
- "Switch units to metric/imperial"
- "Hide/show ruler"
- "Mute/unmute music"
I mean, I know this is pedantic nit-picking, but the site is so perfect, what else am I going to do?
My Original comment here (too late to delete):
Beware. When you reach the end there is a "more projects" button. In there is a cute IQ test (possibly appealing to the HN crowd). When you reach the end of the test it asks for email, and then ultimately wants $1 to get your results. If you pay by credit card due note that there is an auto-checked box for some $29.99 per month subscription for... something.
edit: I turned off my ad blocker and discovered the site is showing some ads. Guessing you clicked on an ad?
also it's pretty ironic because one of his projects is showcasing dark patterns: https://neal.fun/dark-patterns/
Edit: I checked the page's code and it does indeed set the units based on language. If your language is "en-US" you get imperial by default, everyone else gets metric.
How is that possible? Doesn’t it contain at least thousands?
A simple idea but fabulous execution!
If it helps, AFAIK (I do atomic force microscopy of DNA), DNA's height is closer to 2nm than 4.
Got a link to the music?
Instead, it should show how _wide_ it is. And for extra coolness, keep it in frame, coiling longer and longer as you go, and eventually have the same strand, which has been with us all the time, as a specific example (e.g. human chromosome 7 or some such) by _length_
absolutely foul
Sure, there were dinosaurs that were quite big, but they weren't living all at the same time. So there was maybe a big one, that died out, and the next big one would evolve much later.
As this project shows, the biggest animals and plants are living right now.
Also, we're living in the time with the biggest spiders in history. Somehow they don't get that big on average. Turns out, the high oxygen levels in the past didn't affect arachnid sizes as much as insect sizes.
I don't want to have to keep on scrolling to "discover" new images.
But then the music calmed me right down and I wended my way through, not understanding 99% of what I saw but in awe of nature and Neal's art nonetheless.
- Smallest animal: Myxobolus Shekel. Smaller than a WBC at 10 micrometeres.
- Biggest butterfly: Queen Alexandra's Birdwing. Bigger than human brain at 18cm.
- Largest insect to ever live: Meganeura (283 MYA). At 40cm long, a dragonfly larger than a house cat.
- Rafflesias are larger than German Shepherds
- Earth's largest crab: Japanese Spider Crab. 1m, legs pan of 3.75m. More than half the size of a human.
- Always thought Mososaurs were largest animal to ever live but it's the Blue whale at 26m. I don't think I ever appreciated how unfathomably huge they are. (The largest Mosasaur found was 13m. There's a speculated size of 17m as well.)
- World's largest living tree: Hyperion - a giant redwood in california at 115m.
Love seeing something so polished and inspiring. Amazing illustrations and even better music.
Thanks Neal for these projects!