Universe in a Nutshell

Wait But Why & Kurzgesagt

About this app

The range of size in the universe, from the tiniest particles to the epic galaxies—we take you on a journey of size that let’s you explore it all with a single swipe. How big is a planet, compared to a human? And how small is an atom really? You can’t fully wrap your head around the scope of things by just reading about them – so this app lets you experience them in comparison to get a feeling for their true scale. By simply swiping you can zoom in and out all the way from the world of fundamental particles up to the largest galaxies at the edge of the observable universe.

Seamless zooming between the scales of 10^-35 meters to 10^26 meters (no math required)

Amazing fun facts for various scale levels, like the smallest bacterium and the largest black hole

Tap any object for an explanation of what it is, how it works, and our favorite mind-blowing facts

Beautifully animated illustrations of more than 250 objects

Original Kurzgesagt music to complement your experience

Ratings and reviews

I am so grateful to Kurzgesagt for all the effort they've put into the things they make! Everything is amazing and beautiful, the info about each object is great, and the insane sense of scale is so much fun to explore! I also love that there's no ads. My only complaint: I have a Galaxy s10+ and the "X" button on objects' descriptions is semi-hidden behind the camera cutout. I wish it was moved slightly more to the Right. It's still tappable without too much trouble, though.

Super fun to just go through and really try to comprehend the vast size of the universe while also try to realize how tiny things are too. I haven't read many of the descriptions of things yet, so I have so much to learn as well. It would be so cool if there was a VR version/adaptation to this as well, but this is so far great! The control for zooming does have a slight weirdness to it from what I recall, where it would speed up the zoom in/out very slightly the longer I held the zoom. (I like to just zoom slowly in the same direction for a long time and enjoy the scenery and try to imagine the scale of things as they go by).

I love the app, just it needs some graphics optimizations. I use a mid-to-low-end LG phone, and it doesn't run that well without some framerate problems. As soon as I opened it, I saw some graphics bugs. One of my favorite parts of Kurzgesagt videos is the super smooth animation and quality, and 25fps is quite mediocre compared to the videos. Thanks!

What's new

Updated engine version
Fixed crash that occurs when launching the app on some Android 12 devices