We've been watching a lot of sci-fi lately -- Firefly and Serenity, and presently Stargate Universe. It got me thinking about the almost unimaginable distances in this universe, in particular the distances between galaxies.
Milky Way as seen from Earth
It's generally assumed that the Milky Way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years across; the next closest galaxy is Andromeda (M31), which is 200 million light years away.
Andromeda (M31)
To give you an idea of the kind of scale we're talking about, if we created a scale model of the Milky Way that is 3" (three inches) across, and placed it on one of the goal lines of a football field, each of the one-yard markers would represent a distance of 1.2 million light years. Each of the ten-yard markers, then, would equal 12 million light years.
The entire 100-yard length of the football field, goal line to goal line, would represent 120 million light years. This is only a little more than half the distance to Andromeda, which is our nearest galactic neighbor.
The 3" wide model of Andromeda would be 160 yards -- 480 feet, or nearly 1/10 of a mile -- from the Milky Way model.
Wow.
P2
__________________ Genius by birth... slacker by choice. Phoenix's Rarely Updated Blog The indiscriminate use of vulgar language is the linguistic crutch for inarticulate motherfucking sons of bitches. I can figure the number of millimeters in a light year, but don't ask me to do algebra. And everything is green and submarine...
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. ~Carl Sagan
__________________
"...My oldest daughters now, does not see eye to eye with me on most issues. For instance she claims to be atheist. She is also a Yankees fan. I don't know which one bothers me most."
We like to think we have started exploring space, right? If you imagine the earth as a basketball. Dip it in water and the edge of the water is where the Space Station is. The doorway to the gym on the other side is where the moon is. Now imagine how far away Mars is and it's our next door neighbor.
__________________
Brian Johnson (Breakfast Club) "Can you describe the ruckus sir?"
We like to think we have started exploring space, right? If you imagine the earth as a basketball. Dip it in water and the edge of the water is where the Space Station is. The doorway to the gym on the other side is where the moon is. Now imagine how far away Mars is and it's our next door neighbor.
Or, put another way, if the basketball is Earth, then 1 foot = roughly 8,000 miles. At that scale, the moon would be a softball placed 30 feet away, and Mars would be a volleyball 3-1/2 miles from the Sun, and which, at its closest point to Earth, will be 8/10 of a mile away from our basketball.
The Sun would be a 110-foot sphere... I dunno what to use to represent that... placed just over two miles from the basketball.
Giant Jupiter would be an 11-foot weather balloon placed 11 miles away from our Sun, and Saturn a 10-foot one surrounded by rings that measure 19 feet across, but only as thick as a sheet of paper.
Poor little demoted-to-dwarf planet Pluto and its companion Charon would be represented by another softball orbited by a tennis ball, orbiting our scale model Sun at a distance that ranges from 63 miles to 106 miles away.
Oh, and if you wanted to place the nearest star in its proper location, Alpha Centauri would be 137,000 miles away -- roughly half the real life distance to the moon.
Near me there is a river valley maintained as a park by the local metroparks department. The park has a long walk/bike trail going through it, and along this trail at certain points are signs explaining various natural and historical things. One section of the trail is a "solar system walk"; it has signs for the Sun and the planets along the trail at their relative distances from one another. It's amazing because the Sun and the inner planets are all somewhat close enough to each other that you can easily see all the signs; but you might think the signs end at Mars if you don't keep walking. Eventually you come to Jupiter. Neptune's sign is a good three-quarters of a mile down the trail at least. I never did find Pluto (the signs were put up in the 80's, I think, so I assume it's there somewhere...).
__________________ "...Dakota will grow up to be very scary... but in a HOT and desireable kind of way." - 3Ring Binder
That'd work if we needed a model for a star 1.3 million miles in diameter. Sirius is about that size. We'd need to place it at roughly the distance of the moon for the distance to be to scale.
and it's on a collision course!!! run for your lives!!!1
Let's see... we'll represent the incoming asteroid of a half-mile diameter with a grain of sand, hurtling toward scale-Earth at a speed of 6 feet per second.
I have a big coffeetable book of pictures of galaxies and stuff. Somehow it doesn't make me feel insignificant or anything; I am just amazed an' awed an' happy.
( probably in the back of my mind I am thinking "wow I really did an awesome job"... )
This thread reminds of the "A Scale Model of our Solar System" web site. It has a Google Map that lets you place and size the sun anywhere you want. Then you can get it to draw the orbits for the planets to see how far away they would be to scale. Not sure if I got the link from this forum or not so it might be a re-post:
You have pretty much nailed down my skepticism about UFO sightings.
This goes double for the "Parasitic Species" that is often put forth by sci fi. By the time you have the ability to wield the energies that could push you from one inhabitable stellar body to another, you are more than capable than scooting over to your own solar systems local Oort cloud and mining resource to your hearts content.
Gravity wells are a smug bitch man. Until you can solve the problem on how to get out of one that is relatively energy neutral, it's generally not worth the time and effort to pull resources out of one.
We are far more likely to make an interstellar spacecraft out of a hollowed out Asteroid than we ever are to build one on Earth and then launch it.
Near me there is a river valley maintained as a park by the local metroparks department. The park has a long walk/bike trail going through it, and along this trail at certain points are signs explaining various natural and historical things. One section of the trail is a "solar system walk"; it has signs for the Sun and the planets along the trail at their relative distances from one another. It's amazing because the Sun and the inner planets are all somewhat close enough to each other that you can easily see all the signs; but you might think the signs end at Mars if you don't keep walking. Eventually you come to Jupiter. Neptune's sign is a good three-quarters of a mile down the trail at least. I never did find Pluto (the signs were put up in the 80's, I think, so I assume it's there somewhere...).
They might have removed the sign for Pluto since it is now considered not to be a planet but a part of the Kuiper Belt.
Speaking of Sci-Fi TV shows all seasons of Babylon 5 are now on Netflix Instant streaming and I believe that Hulu also has them.
And people think that SETI is a failure because we haven't detected anything in 50 years. That's like going to the beach, dipping a cup in the ocean, and having pulled up only water, declaring there are no fish in it. We haven't even begun.
(Oh, and yes the Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course. Both galaxies will be assimilated into one very large galaxy. That would be cool to watch, but I'm not sure if our sun and solar system will still be around by then.)
The Boston Museum of Science has one of those Solar System done to scale exhibits.
According to the site,
Quote:
Starting from the Charles Hayden Planetarium, the Community Solar System is anchored by an 11.6 ft (3.5 m) diameter Sun -- that is 400 million times smaller than the real thing! We've used the same 1-to-400 million scale (where 1 inch equals 6,215 miles or 10,000 km) to place a set of planet sculptures in exhibit kiosks around the greater Boston area. Each location marks that planets' scaled distance from our model sun.
Pluto is a 13 mile drive away according to Google maps.
Let's see... we'll represent the incoming asteroid of a half-mile diameter with a grain of sand, hurtling toward scale-Earth at a speed of 6 feet per second.
P2
I think he meant Andromeda, which is on a collision course with the Milky Way.
The distances between galaxies
Linear Mode
