The Real Stars and Scale of Sci-fi

Some of the franchises mentioned: Star Trek, The Martian, Dune, Bobiverse, Halo, Mass Effect, Firefly, Serenity, Stargate, Guardians of the Galaxy, Known Space, Hyperion, The Expanse, Foundation, and A Fire Upon the Deep.

CORRECTIONS:
There is an error in the depiction of the tilt of the earth: it is tilted away from the galactic core, not towards it. I am publishing a high-resolution standalone video of the galactic scale animation soon.

Also, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it was a fictional Voyager 6 launched in 1999 that then fell into a wormhole. But still unlikely that there's a wormhole hanging out outside the solar system...

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CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
00:43 - Star Wars
02:25 - Voyager 1
03:15 - Galactic Scale
04:45 - Intergalactic Scale
05:13 - Andromeda
06:10 - Stargate
08:48 - Starship Troopers
09:11 - Foundation
10:17 - A Fire Upon the Deep
10:59 - Star Trek Galaxy
12:21 - 1000 Lightyears
16:29 - 100 Lightyears
26:00 - Firefly/Serenity
29:40 - Dune
31:21 - Known Space
33:16 - Bobiverse
34:09 - Homo Sideria

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SCIENTIFIC SOURCES
The data used for the star positions are the astronexus AT-HYG and HYG 3.5 databases.

Oort Cloud:

Size of the Milkyway:

2,000,000,000,000 Galaxies:

Sagittarius A*:

Betelgeuse Supernova:

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SOCIAL

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ATTRIBUTION

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LEGAL-ISH DISCLAIMER

All non-licensed clips are used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015).

Some of the links above may be affiliate links, which means, at no cost to you, I will earn a small percentage if you make a purchase.

[isaacarthurSFIA]

Great video! As best as I can tell it's pronounced 'eck-you-men-op-oh-lis' though I used to pronounce it 'you-kuh-men-op-oh-lis' a lot.

[jessegriffin]

I don't completely realize what's going on. English isn't even my first language. But I love your dedication.

[lordpoundcake]

I love the constant use of the Mass Effect star map. This little melody will always and forever be ingrained in my soul.

[firesonic]

15:40 the Pleiades are also called "Subaru" in Japanese, and are where the Subaru car company gets its iconic name and logo from.

[Streetsvillainy]

See that fact about Arrakis being one of the furthest (relative to where humans could get to) adds so much to the story. Very cool thank you.

[ronin]

Loved the effort to show these locations along the z-axis. Many sci-fi maps rarely take into account the "depth" of galaxies, so this was a fantastic element of your presentation.

[LuDux]

30:42 Actually spice melange allows navigators to see the future and avoid obstacles in spacehip's path. Folding is done by Holtzman Engine

[studlord]

In Star Trek: The Motion Picture it was explained that the Voyager 6 probe was lost when it fell into an anomoly (referred to in the movie as a "black hole", but now canonically assumed to be an unstable wormhole), and emerged on the other side of the galaxy. There it encountered a race of intelligent machines which repaired and upgraded it, and sent it back towards Earth. This explains how it travelled so far in such a short amount of time.

[aKalishnacough]

Elite Dangerous maps give me anxiety. If you didn't spend 20 minutes staring at them the first time you saw them. You're lying.

[Dungn]

That Mass Effect scanning/map music is just *chefs kiss*. never gets old.

[HyperlordB]

No battletech/mechwarrior locations I noticed, popped into my mind when Eridani was mentioned.

[SeleniumGlow]

Bro. Hats off to you for doing this much of data collection and collation to make sense of all of it and then to visualize it to boot.
I wish I had even 1% of enthusiasm as this to do anything in life.

[grandreefer]

As a sci-fi super nerd, I just gotta say, this video is amazing. Love how it uses locations a lot of us have watched or gamed in and actually provides some sense of scale based on those points of interest. Just such a really good idea.

[Frank_theWitch]

THIS. This is why we're on youtube. Such a great, educational, fun, surprising and entertaining video. You sir are a great content creator, watched your channel: You should create more. You are very talented.

[stevoyd]

Regarding the Stargate bit about 2D representations of star clusters forming symbols;
This is intentional to be a 2D representation because the seventh symbol (unless 8 for the galaxy jumps) is the point of origin.

The gate builders were “ancients” that existed on earth. So they mapped the stars from the perspective of earth and then created a unique symbol for each gate to have its “origin” symbol for dialling out.
Therefore the symbols would differ from gate to gate, which is often mentioned in SG1, and one of their pre-mission objects was to send the M.A.L.P through to determine if there was a DHD (dial home device) and ascertain what the origin symbol was, and what the return coordinates would be to gate from that planet to earth.

[LeftIsBest]

It's interesting that even with Warp Drive and other 22nd-24th Century technology, the entire Star Trek universe is still completely contained within certain defined regions of our Milky Way Galaxy.

[morenofranco]

This is a LOT of work. Painstakingly detailed. Well done.

[Zikar]

Why is there something so incredible about Captain Picard saying the name of star systems?
The way Patrick Stewart says them, like "I know where this is, and you know where this is because this is a log for my superiors" just gives them such a sense of solidity.

[fierylightning]

The fact that both harvest and reach are less than 20 light years away is insane

[RoninSeadonkey]

This was far… one of the best videos I have ever seen on YouTube. The amount of research, objective knowledge base of a huge swath of science fiction and the love of it completely and enthusiastically is on display here. Kudos, bravo, cheers in all the known and forgotten languages. Keep up the strong work, this was impressive AF.