The Scale of the Universe

This site is way too cool! It takes a long time to load so give it a chance before you give up.

http://htwins.net/scale2/

Very cool indeed.

Haven't seen it yet, but I do know this...

If the Earth was the size of a basketball, the International Space Station would be about 1 cm above the surface. That's as far as we can get a human today.

By contrast, 40 years ago, we were sending humans to the moon, which at the same scale is (IIRC) roughly 8.5 meters away.

If my math is correct (and it may not be), the Sun would be about 1.5 kilometers away.

and even that distance is insignificant when you get into the size of the galaxy...

What scale is that? Any idea how far from Earth the Voyager spacecrafts currently are in that scale?

Koen Aerts wrote:What scale is that?

The basketball scale.

Wolfram Alpha failed me, so I had to do the math myself. The "basketball scale" is 1 in 53911184.51613 (rounded to 5 figures) or 1.855 x 10-8

Very nice!
Minecraft World at 10^7.7

Somehow i was expecting "your mom" as last entry. I've been on reddit too often

Koen Aerts wrote:What scale is that?

I don't think there is an official name for that scale. It is just something that one of my favorite bloggers, Phil Plait, uses. Most people are familiar with the size of a basketball, and are often amazed at the 1 cm vs. 8 meter difference.

fred rosenberger wrote:If my math is correct (and it may not be), the Sun would be about 1.5 kilometers away.

Bear Bibeault wrote:Wolfram Alpha failed me, so I had to do the math myself. The "basketball scale" is 1 in 53911184.51613 (rounded to 5 figures) or 1.855 x 10-8

According to Wikipedia, the circumference of a basketball is 75 cm. The circumference of Earth at the equator is 40,000 km. So that would mean the basketball scale is indeed approximately what Bear said (if you divide those numbers it's 1.875 x 10-8).

The average distance to the Sun is 150 million km, so at the basketball scale that would be about 2.8 km.

The average distance to the Moon is about 380,000 km, so at the basketball scale that would be about 7.1 m.

A few years ago I was visiting a friend who lives in Zürich, Switzerland. Near to his home was a park with a scale model of the Solar System. It was a lot smaller than the basketball scale, I think the Earth was about an inch across. The Sun was a large ball, I think 1 or 1.5 m across. The whole model was a few hundred meters long.