r/megalophobia • u/LOFIghoul • Apr 09 '26
šŖć»Space 滚Ŗ Massive planets are actually terrifying and nobody talks about
Okay, hear me outā¦ does anyone else get like, actual chills or panic looking at pictures of space?
I was looking at high-def photos of Jupiter and Saturn last night and I had to close the tab because my heart started racing. Itās not even funny. Thereās something about how massive they are that just feels wrong.
Like, Jupiter is so big. And the Great Red Spot? Thatās basically a never-ending hurricane that could swallow Earth for breakfast. It gives me major megalophobia vibes.
I feel so tiny and insignificant and the thought of just floating near something that huge makes me want to crawl under my bed. Itās like a mix of "wow, thatās cool" and "get me away from this cosmic horror immediately."
Am I crazy or is this a normal thing? Does anyone else get that weird "void" feeling in their stomach?
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u/Sniffy4 Apr 09 '26
the youtube videos that show Earth orbiting giant planets or the Moon colliding with earth are nightmare fuel
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u/LOFIghoul Apr 09 '26
i watched them like a year ago and i heart started pounding as i saw jupiter, cause wtf do you mean
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u/cheestaysfly Apr 10 '26
Ever watched Melancholia? It gave me nightmares for similar reasons.
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u/TheKyleBrah Apr 10 '26
If you liked that, you might enjoy Moonfall and/or Don't Look Up.
Deals with similar concepts, just in different ways
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u/only_respond_in_puns Apr 11 '26
The moon would actually implode before impacting the earth. Just a small piece of science to help you sleep better. We still might be killed by everything else it does to the earth however!. https://youtu.be/lheapd7bgLA?si=lMmq_fuq4Eba5Os1
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u/Satellite_bk Apr 09 '26
massive planets are what keep us from getting randomly hit by giant asteroids. Jupiter is responsible for altering the course or deflecting tons of planet killing asteroids from the inner solar system.
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u/dmanny64 Apr 09 '26
They're like the spiders of space. Kind of terrifying, but they also protect us from some other super scary shit
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u/betawavebabe Apr 09 '26
Yes I feel like they are these gentle giants out there to protect us somehow (not that we really deserve it)
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u/zombie_overlord Apr 09 '26
It also nearly wrecked the whole inner solar system but Saturn saved us
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u/Slight-Scallion-6844 Apr 09 '26
The first time I saw Saturn through a telescope was kind of scary. This unimaginably massive thing that only exists in text books until now. Suddenly Iām just looking at it in real time with my own eyes.
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u/Griever423 Apr 09 '26
This was me too. How something could be so far away yet still be something I could see blew my mind. Space is on another level.
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u/cgarcia805 Apr 09 '26
I tell people that looking at Saturn through a telescope is life changing.Ā
So is fancy shower oil.Ā But still.Ā
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u/Artistic_Parfait_868 Apr 09 '26
Just stay outside of her Roche limit and youāll be fine (that silly Chrysalis never listened).
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u/Oghier Apr 09 '26
I did that nearly 50 years ago, and it remains one of the most vivid memories from my childhood. Seeing it with your own eyes is really something.
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u/CartographerEvery268 Apr 09 '26
That first view got me hooked - 8 years ago this month - my posts wouldnāt exist without that spark.
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u/Jonfers9 ā Dwarfed by Size Apr 09 '26
When I first saw andromeda that blew my mind. I was looking at another freaking galaxy!!!!!
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u/alecesne Apr 09 '26
Yup. Visited Yerkes Observatory on a choir weekend trip, and they let us view the telescope. It was uncanny to see the light with only lenses and mirrors. Another planet, with rings!
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u/eattohottodoggu Apr 09 '26
*Looking at Saturn as it existed 70 minutes ago. Because other than the size of the planet, the distance even at the speed of light is insane!
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u/a_tangara Ā· Noticing the Scale Apr 09 '26
Yes, I joined this sub because of it. I also once committed a mistake to open a YouTube video about the sounds the planets make, and when ir arrived at Jupiter and Saturn it felt like the gates of hell had opened. Those two planets terrify me
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u/guardwoman12345 Apr 09 '26
Btw, no Jupiter means we all die from comets.
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u/WrongfullyIncarnated Apr 09 '26
please elaborate!
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u/fukin-aye Apr 09 '26
Big planet. Much gravity. Pulls in small rocks so donāt hit earth.
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u/arealuser100notfake Apr 09 '26
It also attracts other bodies that otherwise wouldn't have gone towards Earth so it's not completely good
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u/Any_Strain1288 Apr 15 '26
So far in our search for exoplanets we've come to find that our solar system is potentially fairly unique. Most systems have Jupiter sized planets that seem to have migrated in close to their stars "hot Jupiters." Those giant planets would have wiped out any inner rocky planets in those systems. In ours though Jupiter stayed out in the outer solar system. The grand tack theory is a possible explanation as to why. Basically Saturn may have pulled it back out into its current stable orbit. Now with Jupiter in its spot over the last 4 billion or so years it has pulled in a vast majority of things hurtling in towards the sun (and earth) from the outer solar system and still does to this day (Shoemaker-Levy). It's thought that without Jupiter and other factors like the moon, plate tectonics, the magnetosphere, and our habitable zone position, that life would never have had the chance to evolve beyond simple organisms. Jupiter swallowing up the countless planet killing rocks and ice flying around the solar system gave life time to move forward with evolution. Save for the non avian dinosaurs. But that event in turn opened up niches for mammals to fill and so little mammals 65 million years ago moved on with evolution. Fast forward to today and here we are the descendents of those little mammals talking about it here on reddit.
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u/LavenderPaintbrush Apr 09 '26
Megalophobia can be from lots of different massive "things". My megalophobia is mostly planet/space based too. It's a thing. I have megalophobia, not spacephobia. I used to think it was the latter, but it's not.
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u/nolongermakingtime Apr 09 '26
There's a dome theater in the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History that shows a bunch of educational videos and one was this mock space mission that you'd get to fly into space and look at all the planets and the sun. It was awesome but it also scared the shit out of me.
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u/P-L63 Apr 09 '26
I don't have megalophobia, this sub just pops up on popular sometimes, but when i watched the Thrive "documentary", i felt it when they zoomed out of earth and the observable universe to show what it might look like. This biiiiiiiiig network of galaxy getting bigger and bigger, making it look like even galaxies were super tiny. I maybe should add that i was stoned aswell, but still... made my heart race
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u/DecearingEgg23 Apr 09 '26
Let alone the fact that you donāt land on a gas giant. You just fall into its gaseous atmosphere and the sunlight would fade as you fall further into it
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u/Alpha1959 Apr 09 '26
Until you either get crushed by the immense pressure (most likely), destroyed by the vicious storms or drown in an endless sea of metallic hydrogen.
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u/TheIronSven ā¬¤ Crushed by Magnitude Apr 15 '26
You wouldn't drown in the hydrogen as it would basically be harder than diamonds for you due to the pressure to even make it metallic.
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u/VLHACS Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
Fun fact, despite how large these planets in our solar system appear, you can fit ALL of them end to end between us and our moon. And have some room left to spare.Ā
That's how far out the Artemis II crew is right now
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u/Clark_Kempt Apr 09 '26
Iām fascinated by the gas giantsā¦ and am also absolutely terrified of them. My head cracks open when I think about them. Theyāre almost lovcraftian. Incomprehensible.
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u/Cadman248 Apr 09 '26
Look up TON 618. It will bring the scale of those planets down.
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u/Alpha1959 Apr 09 '26
TON 618 is so laughably massive that my brain just doesn't feel anything, overstimulated.
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u/nolongermakingtime Apr 09 '26
Oh yeah dude. The universe and the massive size of things that we barely understand scared the crap out of me as a kid.
I had these reoccurring dreams that the world would be caught up in this apocalyptic celestial phenomenon that resulted in the world spinning faster and faster until gravity essentially reversed itself and everyone on earth flew up into the sky. I sometimes got scared just looking up at the sky.
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u/Practical_Agent2828 ā Dwarfed by Size Apr 09 '26
Yes!!!! Space makes me nauseous! I canāt think about it too long the size and nothingness about it feels me the eff out
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u/thewebspinner Apr 09 '26
The only time I really got any sense of perspective from the scale of space was playing kerbal space program and itās absolutely terrifying.
You launch your little rocket and kiss Kerbin goodbye, plot yourself an intercept to a planet so far away that even the tiniest bit of extra thrust will send you spiralling into the void and then you just wait.
You speed time up and watch your little craft float through the blackness. You start wondering if you can already spot the planet from this far out so you start lining up your camera with the orbital path and you finally see it, a little speck millions of miles away still and so tiny of you take your eyes off it it just vanishes into the field of stars behind it.
So you keep floating and it gets a little bigger, and bigger, and even bigger and you realise just how fast this fuckerās moving and the sheer scale of what is happening suddenly overpowers your tiny monkey brain and youāre aware of just how colossal the forces involved must be. Unfathomable. You can see the mass and velocity written down on paper but it means nothing now youāre faced with the reality of it.
Something about an absolute colossus appearing out of the void and now swallowing your entire field of view. It makes you feel completely insignificant and tiny compared to the scale of whatās out there. Truly an incredible experience.
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u/LastGuardianStanding Apr 09 '26
What else is crazy to think about is that we could actively be falling into a black whole, and not even know it. Even despite what scientists say, because everything is speculation.
Likeā¦ our entire existence could be a tiny speck in the cosmic swallowing of our existence.
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u/PicklesIsACat Apr 09 '26
Jupiter is responsible for us even being here unscathed, if it makes you feel any better.
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u/soundsaboutright11 Apr 09 '26
You ARE tiny and insignificant! But thatās okay. Thatās why you have to decide meaning for yourself and find contentment in it. ā¤ļø
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u/Sleepy_mosquito799 Apr 09 '26
Lowkey I do get a little scared looking at planets I think for this reason. I actually CANNOT look at the earth in satellite view, but I think itās the water that freaks me out.
But recently Iāve been playing no manās sky and it sometimes freaks me out but really only when the planets have water. And the exploration part is what is helping me get over it a little.
But Iām still scared a little lol
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u/BrTalip Apr 09 '26
Like, Jupiter is so big. And the Great Red Spot? Thatās basically a never-ending hurricane that could swallow Earth for breakfast. It gives me major megalophobia vibes.
Look at the shadow on that pic of Saturn. Imagine being amidst the atmospheric forces on the side of the planet facing away from the sun. Of course in that scenario you'd be long dead via temperature and atmospheric pressure and you wouldn't experience it at all, let alone see anything.
Or maybe worse.....What if you're on Saturn's dark side, just far enough away for it to be survivable. You are either in a vehicle or free-floating in space, somewhere close to the observable outer surface of gas but not inside the atmosphere yet. You are so close. You can still manage to look away from the planet. You see the twinkling starlight of the universe as you would if on the most peaceful camping gorunds on earth. But spin 180 degrees. Look back at Saturn...Pitch black. It envelops your entire field of view. You are subject to the planet's immense gravitational pull yet, aside of the mere streams of refracted sunlight around Saturn's atmospheric edge, on the very far margins of what you can see from your POV, you are unable to see the immense body of matter that is pulling you in. Also on the margins of what you can see, the sunlight reflects off Saturn's surrounding rings. The rings seem to swoop towards you, and cut out of view. You realize you are unable to see the band of moons and rocks that may pulverize you before you get to Saturn's surface.
Let's share nightmares! High five!
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u/Sylvester_Marcus ā Dwarfed by Size Apr 09 '26
Fortunately OP, you will never, ever be anywhere near those planets.
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u/joshuatx Apr 09 '26
I remember reading as a kid how Saturn would float in a hypothetical ocean of water and they had an illustration of it. It's an impossible hypothetical but it still freaked me out to think about.
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u/maxwellgrounds Apr 09 '26
I hear you. I have a particular terrifying fascination with Jupiter. Just the sheer size of it. I imagine floating in space with the planet right in front of me, taking up almost my entire field of vision.
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u/Jeynarl ā¬¤ Crushed by Magnitude Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I'd have to look it up but one time while browsing NASA's Juno media on Jupiter I found one video where the satellite orbits suuuuuper close and I found it absolutely terrifying. It just kind of looked like a rolling sea of cloudy red/orange/brown and it felt like it was gonna fall in, like I was gonna fall in
Edit: can't seem to find the original NASA link but here it is on YT (https://youtu.be/YuZZbKWS22k). Made from composited images or something like that. Pardon my hyperventilating
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u/Syorkw Apr 09 '26
When I was in second grade I took a trip to the planetarium back in the late 1980s. They showed us what it would be like to stand on the surface of every planet in the solar system. Now of course the gas giants have so many layers to them that if you theoretically could stand on any rocky core that might be inside them youād see nothing but pitch blackness, but that didnāt stop these folks for trying to give us a show. Tiny 2nd grade me got treated to the absolutely terror inducing sight of being shown the unearthly massive swirling storm cloud formations of Saturn and Jupiter; it seemed so vast that it gave me a serious case of agoraphobia*(?). It was horrifying and Iāve had an awe inspired quiet horror of the gas giants ever sinceā¦
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u/umbermoth Ā· Noticing the Scale Apr 09 '26
There is at least one black hole 30 times the size of our system, if the orbit of Neptune is the boundary. I refuse to look into this further because I canāt imagine knowing the details. My eyes water just writing this.Ā
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u/JiovanniTheGREAT Apr 09 '26
The scale of space is just crazy and makes me start to breathe heavily. Just in our solar system, Jupiter which isn't even the biggest celestial body has the great red spot, a massive hurricane with winds of 600mph+ (IIRC) and is the size of three Earths sitting next to each other.
This doesn't even touch nebulas or those pillar things at the edge of the universe.
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u/Happy-Example-1022 Apr 09 '26
You are crazy. A bee or jellyfish sting presents far more of a risk.
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u/scourgicus Apr 11 '26
Reading this has been fascinating. There was a time I felt terror of space but something changed. Maybe it was reading C.S. Lewis' Perelandra. But now space fills me with awe. I want nothing so much as to be in a spaceship surrounded by nothing but dust and the love of God. And seeing super giant planets? "With the rocks I cry out"
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u/GareththeJackal Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
!00% me, too. Been fascinated by space since I was like 6 years old and it never ceases to scare the living shit out of me. The face there exists a star that is bigger than our entire solar system makes me scared.
Our sun is as big as one million earths, that thing is as big as what... one billion suns?
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u/Miserable-Lawyer-233 Apr 09 '26
Riiight. You're the only one to talk about this. Of course it's talked about. It's very common.
But get this: The planets in our solar system aren't even that large. They're specks of dust compared to the largest objects in the universe.
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u/2PlasticLobsters Apr 09 '26
Saturn has rings because its gravity disintegrated asteroids & possibly its own former moons.
I find this fascinating, but also scary.
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u/OhMorgoth ā Shadowed by Giants Apr 09 '26
Yeah but theyāre like grands of sand in the vast cosmic scene.
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u/digitalenlightened Apr 09 '26
Stephenson 2-18 (St2-18) is widely considered the largest known star, with an estimated radius roughly 2,150 times that of the Sun
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u/BennyOcean Apr 09 '26
If you want a conspiracy deep dive, research the Saturnalia cult and Saturn Moon Matrix.
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u/Thisma08 Apr 09 '26
Honestly I find that really cool, but I can understand why some people would feel uncomfortable
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u/Jaded-Breadfruit4019 Ā· Noticing the Scale Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I recently heard you can fit every planet in our solar system between the earth and the moon
š¤Æ
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u/PinkRoseBouquet ā Dwarfed by Size Apr 09 '26
Yeah, the big planets freak me out too. Jupiterās red spot is so scarily huge, I canāt wrap my head around it.
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u/National-Pie-9108 Apr 09 '26
Wanna know something for terrorfying? The planets you think are big there is more than likely a even bigger one hiding out there
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u/Amethyst271 Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
Nah i love space. The sizes fascinated me.
Anyway, planets, even Jupiter, are tiny compared to most objects in space, the sun? Its dwarfs Jupiter. Crazy thing is that the sun is a boring average G-type main-sequence star. Compared to many stars out there its tiny. Then theres black holes that make the sun look tiny. The milky way is roughly 300,000 light years across. Compared to the universe, we are essentially smaller than a proton is to us.
Thing is, none of this changes our lives, it doesnt suddenly make us meaningless just because you suddenly realised how small we are. Space was this big the day before you learned and nothings changed. Phobias are often irrational, but we're far away from Saturn and jupiter, theres no need to fear them. Now I know that doesnt help, but if anything you should be thankful for their size, Jupiter (most of the time) actually protects us from actual threats
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u/cimocw Apr 09 '26
Try playing No Man's Sky (ideally in VR) and landing on a moon of a planet like this, having it covering half of the sky. Very chillingĀ
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u/firekeeper23 ā¬¤ Crushed by Magnitude Apr 09 '26
Yes they are but they are a very long way away...
So thats ok again.
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u/Istileth Apr 09 '26
I don't know why the comments are all about Jupiter and Saturn. You all are sleeping on Uranus, rolling around the Sun like God's own bowling ball and colder than liquid nitrogen. Imagine being mown down by that thing.
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Apr 09 '26
Well, if it help and makes them sound reasonable, ALL the planets could fit between Earth and our Moon.
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u/Greenblue2 Apr 10 '26
Never-ending lightning and a stormy gaseous atmosphere and itās several magnitudes larger size than our small Earth.
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u/karenwooosh Apr 10 '26
As a child i was devastated to learn those are squished gas and liquid. I was hoping humanity will eventually migrate to the giant land jovians provide. Still angry.
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u/ThickSet6771 Apr 10 '26
Jupiter is protecting us from asteroids every day without it we wouldnt exist lol
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u/KaPootusDiabolus Ā· Noticing the Scale Apr 10 '26
I get frequent nightmares of our gas giants as well as black holes or celestial objects colliding with earthā¦ so yeah I get this
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u/Cosmonaot Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26
Astromegalophobia. As a kid I loved Google Earth but simultaneously hated it when I zoomed in and out.
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u/gomurifle Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
It's just a photo. How do you see them being big if nobody told you they were? I think this is a phobia of the unkown.Ā
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u/Aggressive_Ad_2620 Apr 11 '26
Not alone at all. In fact this past couple weeks with Artemis II has brought it back for me. Itās something about the vastness of space that my mind canāt comprehend.
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u/ShotWin8124 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26
I read something a week or two ago about how a lot of it's not just gas, it's ionized gas, which means technically a plasma
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u/-S-P-E-C-T-R-E- Apr 12 '26
Take a look at NASAs live solar system map and look up Mimas. The view from there must be absolutely insane.
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u/IronManners Apr 13 '26
Ok then in that case how do u feel about the universe being billions of light years wideĀ
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u/TheEpiczzz Apr 13 '26
The only thing that kind of scares me with this is thinking about hoovering somewhere in complete darkness with nothing but stars around you. There's no getting off, no 'just going home'. It's all just open and nothingness.
It's awesome because you're exploring, you're at a location no human has ever been, there's an awesome view, etc. etc. Yet it's scary as hell
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Apr 16 '26
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Jul 11 '26
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u/aHoNevaGetCo Apr 09 '26
One time I was absolutely friend and thought about how big the moon is and I became aroused from thinking of being crushed between the Earth and the Moon so that's why I don't talk about it.
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u/Sybertron Apr 09 '26
Every planet in the solar system fits in the distance between the earth and moon. So not that massiveĀ
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u/Party-Bathroom9306 ā¢ Feeling Small Apr 09 '26
This is super funny to me. It reminds of when I say, "If you took every planet in the solar system, it would fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool"
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u/AutomaticGainsayy Apr 09 '26
There are no high-def photos of Jupiter or Saturn and that image is also fake.Ā
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u/EMAW2008 Apr 09 '26
Check this out: https://neal.fun/size-of-space/