The Solar system is big!
Categories: [ Science ]
Aerospaceweb.org
The solar system is big, that's well known. But how big, exactly?
Let's assume the Sun is the size of a volleyball (about 21 cm in diameter). We would then have the following relative planet sizes and distances to the ball:
- Mercury: 1 mm diameter (a small pin head), 9 m from the ball (a bus)
- Venus: 2 mm diameter (a pin head), 16 m from the ball (a semi-trailer truck)
- Earth: 2 mm diameter (a pin head), 23 m from the ball
- Mars: 1 mm diameter (a small pin head), 35 m from the ball (a blue whale)
- Jupiter: 22 mm diameter (a walnut), 120 m from the ball (maximum length of a football/soccer field)
- Saturn: 19 mm diameter (a smaller walnut), 220 m from the ball (one TGV train)
- Uranus: 8 mm diameter (a cherry's kernel), 460 m from the ball (a double TGV train)
- Neptune: 8 mm diameter (a cherry's kernel), 700 m from the ball (length of the Avenue de l'opéra, Paris, France)
By comparison, the Moon would be 0.5 mm in diameter (a grain of sand) and 6 cm from the pin head (the length of the little finger).
[ Posted on March 14th, 2012 at 23:20 | no comment | permanent link ]
