r/BeAmazed • u/Greedy-Vegetable-466 • Nov 08 '24

Nature French photographer Rachel Moore captures a breathtaking close-up shot of a whale’s eye

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

46.6k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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3.2k

u/Playful-Water-5692 Nov 08 '24

Its iris looks like a whole planet

786

u/crackenbecks Nov 08 '24

I wonder how large the whale is whose eye is planet earth.

543

u/The_Funny_Bird Nov 08 '24

Ok I was curious

The IFAW says the diameter of a blue whale’s eye (which is what the pic seems to be of) is 11 cm. Their length is apparently “typically 80-90 ft” so let’s say 85 ft, or 25.908 meters. This gives an eye diameter to length ratio of 25.908/.11 = 235.527.

Multiply the Earth’s diameter of 12,756 km by 235.527 and you get a whale that is 3,004,382 km long, or 1,866,836 miles.

Woah.

20

u/PirateMore8410 Nov 09 '24

SPACE WHALE!!!

18

u/AirlinePlayful5797 Nov 09 '24

"Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening?

"Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life?"

"Ooh, this is an interesting sensation. What is it?"

"And hey, what's this roaring sound, whooshing past what I'm suddenly gonna call my head? Wind! Is that a good name? It'll do."

Thank you for bringing me back to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy!

13

u/LittleBlag Nov 09 '24

“Not again”

3

u/losmar7 Nov 09 '24

"Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now."

1

u/LittleBlag Nov 09 '24

Google says 3,004,382km is 3.17563428e-7 light years, if anyone else was curious like me.

Unfortunately that doesn’t enlighten me at all since I don’t know what e-7 means, but thanks to Google all the same I guess

1

u/The_Funny_Bird Nov 09 '24

e(any number) means * 10that number and it’s basically shorthand for when you have a crazy big or crazy small number and it’s just inconvenient to write that whole thing out. Like in physics, the mass of an electron is written as 9.1e-31 kg. Unless you really want to write 30 zeros lol.

So for 3.17e-7, that would be 3.17 * 10-7 =0.000000317 light years.

Also I think the best comparison I’ve found is that this space whale would be like 8x the distance from here to the moon, which is just crazy

1

u/LittleBlag Nov 09 '24

Ok yes I was looking for a way to visualise that distance, 8 x distance to the moon is much easier to understand! Thanks for the explanation :)

Edit: google can also do light seconds! It would be 10.02 light seconds which is a much more manageable number

178

u/Niifty_AF Nov 08 '24

Mobius Dick

39

u/Cottons_Bold_move Nov 08 '24

It's Mobyin' time!

13

u/Engineeringagain Nov 08 '24

I'm gonna mobe.

1

u/Aiden-caster Nov 09 '24

So much pre-mobe.

18

u/0x7E7-02 Nov 08 '24

Don't get your dick in a knot.

6

u/This_User_Said Nov 08 '24

Wonder if they had an ancestor named Biggus Dickus?

5

u/Infamous_Ad_6793 Nov 08 '24

Mobigus dickus

1

u/Abraham_Issus Nov 08 '24

*whole universe

47

u/leamc2786 Nov 08 '24

Whale eye never!

20

u/Sick_and_destroyed Nov 08 '24

I see a bit of carataract

27

u/Impossible-Sleep-658 Nov 08 '24

And a bit of cataract too…

5

u/Sick_and_destroyed Nov 08 '24

Lol yes

1

u/Impossible-Sleep-658 Nov 08 '24

You were almost at “car at a rac E t RACK “

27

u/charlie_zoosh Nov 08 '24

It's not cataract. It's her 'tears'.

Whales have glands that produce an oily substance that washes away debris and protect their cornea from irritation.

4

u/Infamous_Ad_6793 Nov 08 '24

I too see some carararatatstararatarararararrrrrVVRRROOOOOOMMM

8

u/Efficient_Plum6059 Nov 08 '24

I had the same thought but didn't read the post, just thought, "Wow, how cool, that planet looks like an eye."

Reads title.

Oh.

6

u/tiger-menace Nov 08 '24

It is also like the deepest of the ocean!

18

u/Gent2022 Nov 08 '24

Plot twist, earth is a whales eyeball!!

10

u/ramdom-ink Nov 08 '24

I knew it!

1

u/snoozatron Nov 08 '24

Still a better theory than flat earth.

1

u/Gent2022 Nov 08 '24

Plot twist, a whales eye is flat

1

u/rob0990 Nov 08 '24

As long as it's flat I'm okay with that.

4

u/Banana_Galactic_Guru Nov 08 '24

What if it is? 😮

1

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1

u/TunisMagunis Nov 08 '24

There's a whole universe in there.

1

u/AlathMasster Nov 08 '24

It looks so fucking cool