Every known object in the Universe,
on a single chart.

From the Planck-mass instanton at 10−33 cm to the Hubble radius at 1028 cm — spanning over 60 orders of magnitude in size and 90 in mass.

The Paper

This visualization is based on “All Objects and Some Questions” by Charles H. Lineweaver and Vihan M. Patel, published in the American Journal of Physics 91, 819–825 (2023). The paper places every known object in the universe on a single log-log chart of mass versus physical radius.

Two fundamental boundaries carve out forbidden regions: general relativity forbids objects smaller than their Schwarzschild radius1 (the black hole line), and quantum mechanics forbids localizing a particle below its Compton wavelength2. These boundaries intersect at exactly one point: the Planck-mass instanton3, the smallest possible object and a candidate for the initial conditions of the Universe.

Together, these boundaries and the objects between them cover the full range of currently known physics. The forbidden regions are, by definition, inaccessible to measurement — understanding them will require new physics beyond the Standard Model and general relativity.

DOI: 10.1119/5.0150209 ↗ Licensed CC BY 4.0
1 The Schwarzschild radius rs = 2Gm/c2 is the radius at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light. Any object compressed below this radius becomes a black hole.
2 The Compton wavelength λc = ℏ/mc is the quantum-mechanical limit on spatial localization. Below this scale, the confinement energy exceeds the rest mass, triggering particle–antiparticle pair creation.
3 The Planck-mass instanton has mass mP ≈ 2.18 × 10−5 g and radius lP ≈ 1.62 × 10−33 cm. It is the unique object whose Schwarzschild radius equals its Compton wavelength.

The Creator

This interactive visualization was created by Sam Inloes, a software developer based in San Francisco.

Technical

Built with D3.js and Tailwind CSS. No frameworks, no build step. All physics constants and object data are embedded directly. Wikipedia images are stored locally for instant loading.