Originally posted by: Brick
Date: August 26, 2009 at 11:08 AM
Source: https://forum.mmajunkie.com/threads/you-are-insignificant.16949/
The size and age of the universe are mindboggling and very hard to put into any kind of meaningful perspective (at least for those willing to believe the science, and not that the earth is only 10,000 years old and that kind of stuff).
I once read something that tried to put it into perspective by saying if the earth is the size of a tennis ball, the nearest star is so many miles away, etc. etc. I did google search, I don't think this is the exact thing I read, but here is some good stuff and a few excerpts:
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/CosmosNotes/distance.htm
It is impossible to make a physical model that shows Man, the planets, and the stars on the same scale. If we make the Earth a quarter, the Moon becomes a pea 29 inches away. The Sun is 9 feet across and 1000 feet away. Pluto is 7 miles away, and the nearest star is still off the real Earth:
49,000 miles away.
If we let the Sun be a quarter, the Earth is a speck 1/100 inch in diameter and ten feet away. Pluto is more than a football field away. And at last we can begin to show stars in our scale model. The nearest one is about 500 miles away, and it, too, is the size of a quarter, with a pea-sized companion star about 200 feet away.
Placing a single coin in each State capital covers the U.S. with coins more densely than space is filled with stars
.
This does not even get into the empty space between galaxies and the number of galaxies (15-100 billion or so), which takes it to a whole other level of hugeness.
