This version was made with Gemini 3.8. It's a card-style HUD explorer that divides the range from the Planck length (10⁻³⁵ m) to the observable universe (10²⁶ m) into 19 steps. From Earth on, it uses the same reference point as Scale Opus 5 and SCALE ASTRA: Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul.
19 steps, four cards each
Observable universe → Laniakea Supercluster → Milky Way → outer solar system → inner solar system → Earth → Seoul metropolitan area → Gwanghwamun Square → a person → a hand → skin tissue → a cell → a chromosome → the DNA double helix → a molecule → an atom → an atomic nucleus → a quark → the Planck length: 19 steps in all. At each step, cards in the corners of the screen show the real size, the scientific notation and key facts.
Wheel input accumulated for smoothness
Instead of jumping one step for every wheel input, it collects the input into a running total and interpolates into the next step. Each step change plays a different warp sound and a scale tick sound depending on whether you're zooming in or out, and the pitch of the background audio shifts in real time with the current scale.
This version, and the others
The same scale ladder also exists as Scale Opus 5, made with Claude Opus 5; SCALE ASTRA, made with GPT Astra; Scale Gemini 3.6, also made with Gemini but exploring 42 objects through search and a comparison lab; and Scale Odyssey Opus 5.5, made with Claude Opus 5.5. It's fun to put them side by side and see how each AI solves the same problem differently.