After binge-watching Lost in Space this weekend, I was reminded just how difficult it is to wrap your brain around interplanetary distances and sizes, let alone interstellar distances. When I was a kid I read a science book that provided a model that my 6-year-old brain could grasp. Thanks to Google, Excel, and Adobe Illustrator, I was able to reconstruct the info from that book. So here goes:
Imagine that the earth is a marble, ½ inch in diameter. On that scale, the sun would be 4½ feed in diameter. If we park the sun at home plate in a typical major league baseball stadium, say, PNC Park, the orbit of Earth (484 feet) would be beyond the confines of the stadium. In fact, it would pass over the Allegheny River on part of its route. The orbit of Mercury would be a fly ball (187 feet), Venus a home run (350 ft), and least down the left and right field lines (~330 ft). Mars (737 ft) would be well into the river, the asteroid belt would be over Fort Duquesne Blvd on the other side of the Allegheny, and Jupiter would be in Market Square (just under half a mile away). The orbit of Saturn would pass over parts of Duquesne University and beyond PPG Arena. Uranus would be just past the Tower on the Pitt Campus (2.8 miles away from Home Plate). Neptune and Pluto would be just short of and just beyond Point Breeze (4.4 miles & 5.8 miles).
So, starting with our 4½ ft sun at home plate, we haven't even made it
to the Squirrel Hill Tunnels, and that just gets us to the edge of our
solar system. Back to Lost in Space...continuing at the same scale,
Alpha Centauri would be 260,000 miles away - 30,000 miles beyond the
Moon.
Quoting Douglas Adams (from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), "Space is really big."
Quoting Douglas Adams (from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), "Space is really big."
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