Submitted by 00Askingquestions00 t3_11yoayl in space
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Comments
BeepBlipBlapBloop t1_jd8kt9k wrote
If the sun were the size of a pea the distance to the edge of the solar system would be within the length of a football field and Proxima Centauri would be 225 miles away.
JoshuaACNewman t1_jd8l9l0 wrote
That makes Earth somewhere around the size of the ball of a ballpoint pen.
Vernerator t1_jd8lu1y wrote
If I did the math correctly, with your Earth equals a tennis ball. Earth equals about 7900 miles dia. A tennis ball equals about 2.5 inches. Proxima Centauri is 2.53xE13 miles away.
With the conversions, another tennis ball would have to be placed 126,363 miles away from the first.
syentifiq t1_jd8mmnt wrote
Using a tennis ball to represent the heliosphere, I get proxima centauri at about 18 km and the nearest Galaxy at a bit less than half the current distance to the moon. Can someone check this?
b_a_t_m_4_n t1_jd8n5r0 wrote
The nearest star Proxima Centauri is about 2687070au from us. The Solar system is 1921.56au in diameter. So 139.87x is the conversion factor. If the solar system was a 6.8cm tennis ball then Proxima would be about 9.5 meters away.
FridgeBaron t1_jd8pv96 wrote
its not exactly what you were asking for but reminded me of this
https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
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It does an ok job of the magnitudes involved in just our solar system.
Anonymous-USA t1_jd8rajw wrote
Since the Earth is “only” ~24K mi in circumference, you’d wrap around the equator over 5x. So it may be best to shrink that Earth from a tennis ball to a pea. Then ur only wrapping around once 😉
00Askingquestions00 OP t1_jd8vj7k wrote
Ok. I appreciate the math. It's just to unimaginable to grasp the size. And that's the closest star.
reddit455 t1_jd8kodw wrote
>But scaling it down and using a tennis ball or a marble to represent either earth or the solar system could it be possible?
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it is not possible to print a picture of the solar system to scale.
either the distances are too big, or the planets are too small.
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https://vimeo.com/139407849
On a dry lakebed in Nevada, a group of friends build the first scale model of the solar system with complete planetary orbits: a true illustration of our place in the universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System
The Sweden Solar System is the world's largest permanent scale model of the Solar System.
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Cycle the Solar System
https://www.york.ac.uk/physics-engineering-technology/outreach/astrocampus/cycle-solar-system/
The York Solar System model is a scale model of the Solar System, spread out along 6.4 miles (10km) of the old East Coast mainline railway. Along it you can find scale models of all the planets in our solar system as well as models of the Cassini and Voyager spacecraft.