Hi all! I’m Aleix Ramon, the music composer of the soundtrack.

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 dynamic soundscape is delightful, as it subtly adds instruments and musical texture as you progress. And going back down the scale regresses it to simple again. Smoothly done.

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).

Beautiful. It's clearly a labor of love.

The authors deserve our support. Buy them a coffee via the provided link.

Thank you for sharing this on HN.

> Human A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.

Neal delivers. I recently learned that viruses are not considered living being, but I'm nevertheless happy they're included here because they're both relevant and interesting in this context.

No.fun in the cookie dialogue. Had to click 26 (sic!) switches to opt out of being tracked.

If you’re interested to read something on that topic I highly recommend the essay "That's About the Size of It" by Isaac Asimov (in his book "View from a Height").

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!

> A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.

Definitely worthy the scroll!

I would like to play an open world game (like Minecraft) where 1 in-game meter equals 1 micrometer in the real world. That way, one could get a feeling about the scale of things.

Never before have I seen the message "Firefox has been terminated by the Linux kernel because the system is low on memory". Thanks for a new experience!

I do like the visualization.

It seems to be like some of the scales slightly off?

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?

Great visualization! It would have been nice to zoom out to a view of the world from space at the end, since this is really the max size of life as we know it (n=1 so far).

Reminds me of https://scaleofuniverse.com . I think confining it to just living things removes the perspective of "Wow, we're really small compared to the rest of the universe".

Pretty glad the 9 foot long Arthopleura centipede went extinct 300 million years ago. No one wants to deal with that thing.

> Human: A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.

Thanks for the laugh!

I like it, but the switch from metric to inches is confusing, and I think introduces a bug - there's no way a sea snail is 5-6 neurons high.

One of the books that got me introduced to this fascinating aspect of our natural world is John Tyler Bonner's Size and Cycle. It has features amazing log-log plots of how different organisms from grow with time: from eggs to full-grown organisms. This kind of visualisation gives you a different perspective on growth and scale

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.

https://postimg.cc/hfdGGJ8H

The music is so moving, tear inducing. One of the best links I've seen posted here and I've been here 15+ years. Well done Neal. I wish credit was given to the music, anyone know who created it?

HUMAN

A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites. :)

Tools like this are surprisingly effective for teaching, especially compared to static diagrams. Interaction makes the scale differences stick.

Missing a mushroom from Oregon [1]

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-...

So many new facts to learn and I like how popular a post about the natural world is here

This was awesome! Also, I couldn't stop my child brain from anticipating "your mom" at the end.

If you liked the first half of this site and want an extension, Cell Biology by the Numbers (2015, Milo, Phillips, https://book.bionumbers.org/) is great and has a similar intuition-building fun sense about size as well as various other measurements, including weight, time and energy at the atomic to micro-organism level.

Reminds me of the classic Scale of the Universe flash toy by Cary Huang (now available in HTML 5!):

https://htwins.net/scale2/

This has DNA as the smallest object and has a large protein next to it, so it misses the fact that a gene's DNA is almost always larger by weight and volume than the protein it encodes.

Amazing!

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...

It makes me emotional when I think about where life started and what it evolved into. Life created so many different types of organisms, each having different features while maintaining the equilibrium of the planet. From bacteria, to massive dinosaurs, to tiny homosapiens who inevitably control the largest organisms.

All hail web based apps!

We really dont need playStore and appStore to run beautiful things like this.

You’re telling me a white blood cell is only ten times longer than mitochondria?

How is that possible? Doesn’t it contain at least thousands?

Great webapp. There is a similar app that I love to scroll through from time to time. Its free and needs no internet connection. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/universe-in-a-nutshell/id15263... The range of size in the universe, from the tiniest particles to the epic galaxies - we take you on a journey of size that lets you explore it all with a single swipe.

Onl missing a Wikipedia link on each page!

I find it amazing, that we can build microprocessors with transistors the size of a DNA molecule

My main takeaway was that I had no clue how large Krill can get. To think that Antarctic Krill is as long as the Bee Hummingbird is tall is absurd to me.

Neal.fun is good clean fun - my kids love it too. Neal, if you are listening, would pay for an ad-free version (I already bought you some coffees too).

Very cool. I was surprised that orangutans are described as being only 2 feet 9 inches tall, I think most are a bit larger. Maybe when sitting they're under 3 feet? From wikipedia:

"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)."

Wow! That's very interesting.

CGP Grey does a similar video — spanning the sizes of our entire observable universe — called "Metric Paper" [0]

[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.

Why haven't I seen a Tardigrade with my eyeball? It seems like they are the size of a spot on a ladybug from the pics.

> Velociraptor > Smaller than usually depicted, the Velociraptor was actually only about the size of a turkey.

This is an interesting fact.

1 nitpick: The Dwarf Lanternshark is not found off the coast of "Columbia" but "Colombia!"

> A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites

On a desktop screen, you also see a 'Compare To' button which puts the current and the compared one beside each other!

Reminds me of the video game Everything. Its a really cool game where you explore the various scales of the universe. It has its quirks (somewhat phoned in graphics like animals walking) but the concept and execution are great IMO, would love a sequel. Also bonus points for featuring Alan watts as a core character.

Absolutely loved that the intensity of the music is synced with the swiping. Fantastic job as always!

If anyone wants to set this up to auto-run all the way to the right and then all the way back to the left, here is a vibe-coded (sorry) browser console script. Makes a great "screen-saver" if you kick off the script and then put your browser in full screen mode :)

    (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');
        };
    })();

It claims a banana isn't technically living, but a banana has living cells so I'm not sure how accurate that is. I'm not sure when they're all considered 'dead' after harvesting though - maybe some wiggle room there.

Neurons are huge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEHCCsFFIuY

Star Size Comparison 3, simply a stunning visualization.

Did a great job keeping the scale jumps fresh. Every step had a little twist instead of just a commonly known larger animal on the next slide. Wild that the Japanese spider crab is basically the same size as an orangutan.

Crazy how something so simple hits so hard. Always wild to see how much meaning people can pack into a minimal format.

I am sure everyone has their own mind blown moment, and for me it was there being an animal about the size of a red blood cell.

I’m pleasantly surprised that Tyrannosaurus rex’s tiny hands were depicted so accurately. As far as I recall, scientists are still puzzled about why it even had hands. Apparently, they were too small to be useful for anything, not even scratching its face.

[edited] - It's incredible to think that it starts from DNA, is 3.5nm tall and the solid silicon fins in our phone's transistor is twice that.

For comparison: ASML machines print chips with precision up to 2nm.

https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems/twi...

Is banana a life? If yes, then hundreds of other lives are not included in this project.

A simple idea but fabulous execution!

He always makes great content, I love it.

Great job.

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:

http://howmanyelephants.co.uk/

“Compressible rodent” was not a phrase I thought I’d ever hear but I’m glad I did. Worth the price of a couple of coffees.

Beautiful site. Also very pleased to see the mitochondrion being referred to as the powerhouse of the cell, as is law.

You are an artist, a good one .

(Uninsightful comment but I’m gonna put it here anyway) The US spelling of haemoglobin is all kinds of wrong. Love the site. Would love some algae in there though. Perhaps a desmid or diatom?

Reminds me of the classic "powers of 10" video: https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0. Someone ought to remake that but as a gaussian splat reconstruction, so you can freely move the camera as well as zoom.

I like the stuff un the sute but the number if partners and affiliates in the consent window is very off putting.

The people on the page look really scary with DarkReader enabled.

I didn't know tardigrades can be big enough to be seen with the naked eye. Apparently big enough to be seen but not big enough to be recognised without magnification.

Beautiful! I love the human feet always visible in the background! It helps me set perspective.

Like all of your projects....thank you for sharing

Wonderful. The music, illustrations, and sliding sound effect reminded me of the game Braid.

This is simply beautiful, and will definitely inspire me with some arty projects I'm working on.

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

this has more of an indie gem feel compared to the blockbuster that was stimulation clicker. as others have mentioned it reminds me of scale of the universe flash animation. I think borrowing some ideas from that, including zooming in and out rather than side to side, could have benefits here.

Fun to see the Jerboa. I recently read a family history written by my uncle and he believes this is the source of our family name.

A week ago, I learned that animals weren't bigger in the past.

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.

Why not "microinches" while you're at it?

So wonderful. Thanks for making this so open. I'll show it to my kids. The artwork is very good and the soundtrack too.

Nit: the tool-tips on the action icons in the top-right aren't consistent.

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?

I don't understand how the location of a 377 foot tall tree could be kept secret. Wouldn't that type of thing be visible in satellite imagery at the very least?

EDIT: Nevermind. Perhaps it was an ad that I clicked on. Lots of comments here indicating they don't see it, and some that did.

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.

It was great until Sea snail appeared in inches. Transitioning from micrometer/milliliter to inches is pretty rough

The music is phenomenal. Really, really phenomenal.

>Music & SFX by Aleix Ramon >Cello performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga

Got a link to the music?

So many loving comments, I have nothing more to add to them, and nothing to subtract from them.

it seems strange E. Coli can fit 70,000 ribosomes

Minor thing that bothers me is that I can't scroll through the things like in the deep sea or space elevator.

Very beautiful. Love this.

If it helps, AFAIK (I do atomic force microscopy of DNA), DNA's height is closer to 2nm than 4.

Why not the super cluster?

double clicking makes the animation jitter. ive had to deal with matching derivatives of smooth slopes in rendering as well. the animation seems to be finite time (and so variable velocity) and mashing click is just updating the final point without matching the current derivative.

Beautiful website, love that it's using vue.

The Japanese spider crab being the same size as a tiger shocked me.

Always a joy to see neal.fun on the HN front page.

Are there supposed to be pictures? I passed a human silhouette, but that was it.

Cool, but a little more thought on the content rather than the presentation would improve it. For example starting with an arbitrary segment of DNA double helix and saying how "tall" this arbitrary segment is, is just silly.

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_

!! super nice thanks !

Always awesome with by Neal.

Blood cells are huge!

An obvious benefit of "humans adapting to create websites"!

What surprised me most was how large a single neuron is.

This is what the web should be

I've got a sudden strong urge to play Katamari Damacy.

That was fun, neal.fun.

awesome that there was a banana for scale!

>microns to inches

absolutely foul

if anyone that made this sees this, you made a typo on the Dwarf Lanternshark, its not Columbia, its ColOmbia

The first page looks like a book. It's awesome. Thanks, so refreshing. No fucking inhuman cookie banner.

beautiful illustrations, beautiful site

Illustrations are fantastic

I always click when I see neal.fun.

Just delightful, thank you Neal.

Nice that the back button works.

Why would th3 website switch from metric to usa units out of nowhere m

What about that 3.5 sq mil fungi

beautiful soundscapes

Great use of sound!

amazing job

nicely done.

What made the DNA?

Neal is him

Well made!

If I see a neal.fun link on HN, I click.

where is Solaris?

The visual scale seems off, especially on the smaller end of things. Also, are Velociraptors really that small? Jurassic Park lied to me.

cool and artistic app, how did you make this

My kids will LOVE this

Banana, ha ha.

I wish Neal would do behind the scenes, how he built this art. I wonder whether LLM assistants like Claude Code make such an interactive show more feasible.

He previously did a game "Infinite Craft" which leveraged Llama models. However, I was only able to find an outdated blog from 2019.

Sorry to say that my first reaction was that this is heresy. . . all this talk of science is a hoax.

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.

Interesting things from this:

- 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!