Australia is wider than the moon. If earth had the size of a football (soccer), the moon would be about 7m away. If the sun had a diameter of 1m, Neptune would be 5.6km away. In that scale model, the next star would be placed in the outer planets. Space is insanely big.
I looked up the circumference of a football and it said about 70cm. As the moon is about 10 times the circumference of the earth away, that’d put the moon at 7m away.
Voyager is fantastic, but it’s still way, way closer to the solar system than anything else.
An excerpt from Wikipedia:
At this rate, it would need about 17,565 years to travel a single light-year.[78] To compare, Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, is about 4.2 light-years (2.65×105 AU) distant. If the spacecraft was traveling in the direction of that star, it would take 73,775 years to reach it. Voyager 1 is heading in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus.
30 years ago we didn’t even know for sure if planets around other stars was a common thing and had no expectation we’d actually know their chemical compositions
Yes, and they are still on a galactic orbit, not a solar orbit. They are, unquestionably, the first things we’re sending off, regardless of whether they arrive anywhere substantial.
Actually, Jupiter doesn’t have a solid core the way you think! The gases just get so dense at the core that it starts to behave like a solid. You couldn’t, like, blow away all the clouds and have some rock to wander around on.
All the planets in the solar system can fit between the earth and the moon
sometimes
And murcury is the closest planet to all of them!
Australia is wider than the moon. If earth had the size of a football (soccer), the moon would be about 7m away. If the sun had a diameter of 1m, Neptune would be 5.6km away. In that scale model, the next star would be placed in the outer planets. Space is insanely big.
I’m confused what you mean by wider. As far as I can tell Australia is about 4000km wide and the moon’s circumference is about 11000km
EDIT: it’s late and I am dumb, I take it you mean the moon’s diameter! 3474km
7 meters?
I looked up the circumference of a football and it said about 70cm. As the moon is about 10 times the circumference of the earth away, that’d put the moon at 7m away.
Diameter or circumference?
A 70cm diameter soccer ball (>2 ft across) would be kinda fun. Except headers the CTE would be even worse!
All Very true facts. I admit I was and am still taken aback by the measurement and extrapolation of linear distances using… circumference.
Yeah it’s a weird way to make the distances sound shorter than pi*(a measurement we all can visualize).
That’s insane when you really think about it.
I doubt we’ll ever leave our system
If you count Voyager, we already have.
Otherwise … Yea, I’ll be surprised if society in general even makes it to 2100 unscathed.
Bad news with the AMOC modeling yesterday. 2100 is starting to seem optimistic…
Voyager is fantastic, but it’s still way, way closer to the solar system than anything else.
An excerpt from Wikipedia:
This is why I don’t get excited to hear about the discovery of ‘Earth-like planets’ 182 light years away.
30 years ago we didn’t even know for sure if planets around other stars was a common thing and had no expectation we’d actually know their chemical compositions
Yes, and they are still on a galactic orbit, not a solar orbit. They are, unquestionably, the first things we’re sending off, regardless of whether they arrive anywhere substantial.
Gonna need a fact check on this one.
Are we counting the gas of Jupiter or just the solid core? Same for the others
Actually, Jupiter doesn’t have a solid core the way you think! The gases just get so dense at the core that it starts to behave like a solid. You couldn’t, like, blow away all the clouds and have some rock to wander around on.
I assumed the hydrogen had become condensed into a crystal solid? Or at least, that’s the current theory
Whole planets. You do have to cant Saturn because the rings don’t fit
they’re ephemeral anyway