APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)

[Roz]

That was just lovely!

[Markus Schwarz]

Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany

[bystander]

Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany

Try this one on youtube. It's the same video.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Roadbum]

The University of Maine has done something like this. The sun is represented as an arc in a three story stairwell in the Science building on the Presque Isle campus. The rest of the planets are strung out along US Highway One down to near Houlton. The scale and the planets are to scale. Most of them can be seen along the highway, though one has to know where to look and to pay attention.

[Visual_Astronomer]

Precisely. GR provides a very accurate description of the behavior of matter, but it is a mistake to confuse reality with a mathematical model of it. I have no fear of philosophy!

Or perhaps, it is a mistake to believe there's a difference between the two.

A model must be different from the thing it represents, else it would be the thing itself, not a model of it. Max Tegmark thinks the universe is made of math, but I'm not so sure.

Newton had a good model, but it got replaced by Einstein. Relativity and quantum physics do a really good job describing particular narrow slices of reality, but they aren't unified, and they don't include all the dark matter and energy. Surely some day they will be swept aside by an even more precise, all-inclusive model of the world.

[Chris Peterson]

Precisely. GR provides a very accurate description of the behavior of matter, but it is a mistake to confuse reality with a mathematical model of it. I have no fear of philosophy!

Or perhaps, it is a mistake to believe there's a difference between the two.

A model must be different from the thing it represents, else it would be the thing itself, not a model of it.

My point was simply that if the model perfectly represents the behavior, then there is little meaning to what the behavior "really" is. All we need is the model. When discussing the Universe, "reality" isn't a useful concept, assuming it even has meaning at all.

We have few perfect models at this point, but that's a separate issue.

[geckzilla]

I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it. What model would you say is perfect already, Chris?

[Chris Peterson]

I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it. What model would you say is perfect already, Chris?

I don't know if any are (although some might be). But I don't know why a model can't perfectly represent reality. I don't see that it's something that can never be achieved.

[neufer]

I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it.
What model would you say is perfect already...

• 1) The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant.
  
  2) E=mc²
  
  3) Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
  
  4) The four laws of thermodynamics.
  
  5) Maxwell's equations
  
  6)

[Ron-Astro Pharmacist]

I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it.
What model would you say is perfect already...

• 1) The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant.
  
  2) E=mc²
  
  3) Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
  
  4) The four laws of thermodynamics.
  
  5) Maxwell's equations
  
  6)

I like this one too though not quite the same type of equation.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

I am curious if the this the makers of the video considered inclination from the plane or even how difficult showing it would be.

[Markus Schwarz]

Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany

Try this one on youtube. It's the same video.

There is no technical problem but a legal issue, which is a lot more difficult to resolve

[Chris Peterson]

Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany :(

Try this one on youtube. It's the same video.

There is no technical problem but a legal issue, which is a lot more difficult to resolve :bang:

Just use a proxy. These things are easily worked around.

[geckzilla]

Haha, it's just way too easy to make jokes of poor taste involving (fire)walls and overbearing copyright groups in Germany...

[mwarri]

There is also a scale model at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, with the Sun in front of the museum, and marker posts down the street toward the Washington Monument.

Question: With the Sun in the Black Rock Desert on the scale you constructed, about how far away is the nearest star? Denver? St. Louis? etc.

Thanks!

[neufer]

Question: With the Sun in the Black Rock Desert on the scale you constructed, about how far away is the nearest star? Denver? St. Louis? etc.

~47,000 kilometers or about 30% further than geostationary satellites.

[ta152h0]

that is a lot of kilometers

[Beyond]

Heck, that's even a lot of miles!

[neufer]

Question: With the Sun in the Black Rock Desert on the scale you constructed, about how far away is the nearest star? Denver? St. Louis? etc.

~47,000 kilometers or about 30% further than geostationary satellites.

that is a lot of kilometers

And yet a banana slug could traverse that distance in ~600 years = ~150 life spans.

It would take humans ~30,000 years = ~400 life spans to get to Proxima Centauri.

"Interstellar travel" for banana slugs makes more sense, IMO.

[ta152h0]

lets see, one spaceship pulling an Airstream trailer for supplies, having babies on the way with all the claptrap required to raise such babies to be doctors, scientists, engineers going thru 150 lifespans being bombarded by intense radiation and quite possibly never to return info to Earthdwellers. I think having an ice cold on here is a better scenario .

[MarkBour]

Nice to hear about the permanent models constructed in Alaska and Maine. It would be fun to visit these and see them.

[M100]

This is a wonderful project that truly educates concerning the sheer size of space, however, I have to take issue with the statement about floating in nothing. Dark matter, gravitational fields, cosmic rays, supernovas, galaxies, the universe. Truly not nothing.