an interesting footnote about scale:
Empeda wrote:
I found a good reference for the comparative distances/sizes at
http://www.nineplanets.org:
Imagine Earth the size of a grape.
The moon would be a foot from the earth.
The sun would be 1.5m in diameter and 150 metres away.
Jupiter would be the size of a large grapefruit and be about 5 city blocks away.
Saturn (an orange!) - 10 blocks.
Uranus and Neptune (lemons) - 20 and 30 blocks.
A Human - the size of an atom.
The nearest star: 40,000 KILOMETERS AWAY.
Vast my friend.... vast.....
This is another way to put it
Speed of light travel and the distance of space
If you could walk at the speed of light, this would be how fast you could travel.
Start at a point on the ground which will represent the center of the sun and mark it, then walk at your regular pace. If you walk for 2.3 seconds, you will reach the outside of the sun. Mark that spot and continue. All distances will be given as time from this point.
Continue walking from the sun for 3 minutes and you reach Mercury, 6 minutes and you reach Venus, 8 ½ minutes to get to Earth (look back to your starting point can you still see it?). 11 minutes from the sun you’ll find Mars. 46 minutes from the sun and you get to Jupiter. 1 hour and 16 minutes from the sun and you arrive at Saturn. 2 hours and 43 minutes from the sun you will find Uranus. 4 hours and 13 minutes of walking will get you to Neptune. 6 hours (360 minutes) of walking will get you to Pluto. How far can you walk in 6 hours? To get to our nearest star, you will have to walk, non stop, for over 4 years. That’s far.