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Observe and Wonder. . .
How do we explain:
 |
Difficulty with scale model for the solar system:
It doesn't fit in the room . . . or else the planets are too tiny to
see!
If 100,000 km is 1cm:
| Object | Size at this scale | Distance from Sun |
| Sun | 14 cm | |
| Mercury | 1/2 mm | 5 meters |
| Venus | 1 mm | 10 meters |
| Earth | 1mm | 15 meters |
| Moon | 3/10 mm | 15 meters (3.8 cm from earth) |
| Mars | 1/2 mm | 22 meters |
| Jupiter | 1.4 cm | 74 meters |
| Saturn | 1.2 cm | 145 meters |
| Uranus | 1/2 mm | 298 meters |
| Neptune | 1/2 mm | 475 meters |
| Pluto | 2/10 mm | 595 meters |
| Nearest Star
(Proxima Centauri) |
2.5 cm | 4000 km (Boone to San Francisco) |
The universe is immense:
Our Galaxy (The Milky Way): 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) stars
80,000 light years across
NOTE: a LIGHT-YEAR is a measure of DISTANCE. It is the distance light travels in a year, going at its incredible speed of 186,000 miles per second.
There are 5,895,896,000,000 miles in a light year. How did I figure this out? Check my math!
Some other mind-blowing ideas:
200 billion other galaxies, each
with billions of stars
The strange math of cosmology theory suggests that there is no center
and no edge of this. . .
Some good Astronomy Links:
Earth and Moon Viewer: http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/vplanet.html
The Nine Planets: http://www.seds.org/billa/tnp/
Star Date Online: http://stardate.utexas.edu/default.html
Astronomical Data from the Navy: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/AA/data/
Earth and Sky Home Page: http://www.earthsky.com/
NASA Spacelink: http://spacelink.nasa.gov/.index.html
The Best of the Hubble Space Telescope: http://www.seds.org/hst/hst.html
Information About Seeing Satellites: http://www.heavens-above.com/
Powers of Ten site: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
Your Weight on Other Worlds: http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/weight/
©2001 Jeff Goodman
