The cosmic distance ladder with Terence Tao (part 2)

How we know the distances to the planets, stars, and faraway galaxies. Instead of sponsored ad reads, these lessons are funded directly by viewers: https://3b1b.co/support FAQ with added details and corrections: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2025/02/13/cosmic-distance-ladder-video-with-grant-sanderson-3blue1brown-commentary-and-corrections/

An equally valuable form of support is to simply share the videos.

Terry and his collaborator Tanya have an Instagram about the cosmic distance ladder: https://www.instagram.com/cosmic_distance_ladder/

Artwork of Guillaume Le Gentil by Kurt Bruns Artwork of Antonia Maury and Henrietta Leavitt by Talia Gershon: https://bit.ly/taliagershonart Several of the great cosmological animations where by Paul Dancstep

Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 1:04 - Distance to Venus 7:30 - Speed of light 10:08 - Nearby stars 13:20 - The Milky Way 18:14 - Nearby Galaxies 19:44 - Distant Galaxies 22:42 - Lingering mysteries

These animations are largely made using a custom Python library, manim. See the FAQ comments here: https://3b1b.co/faq#manim https://github.com/3b1b/manim https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim/

All code for specific videos is visible here: https://github.com/3b1b/videos/

The music is by Vincent Rubinetti. https://www.vincentrubinetti.com https://vincerubinetti.bandcamp.com/album/the-music-of-3blue1brown https://open.spotify.com/album/1dVyjwS8FBqXhRunaG5W5u

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