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Proprtions - How Small We Really Are

comagz.com — Basically it's models of the stars in our solar system that give a sense of perspective. But you got to see it to understand why it's so diggworthy.

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  • DigiDave, on 10/12/2007, -61/+5"With President Bush calling for future space trips to Mars, NASA needs to figure out how to keep an astronaut's body healthy for long periods of weightlessness." So NASA has designed crazy bedrest experiments on earth to study zero-gravity on earth. http://digg.com/science/The_life_and_times_of_a_human_guinea_pig.
  • spaceman0, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4beautiful
  • supernova17, on 10/12/2007, -6/+31Hmm, it kinda looks like former Soviet Union could have easily covered the entire planet of Mars. Red Planet, ha.
    • plamoni, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2In Soviet Russia... (insert replies here)
    • lofiboy, on 10/12/2007, -16/+9In Soviet Russia story digg you!
  • TekeeTakShak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Holy baJesus, Batman! I thought we were small...but I didn't know we were THAT small! Hell, look at Pluto in the last picture...you can barely see it :)
    • plamoni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6And to think... those are just PLANET sizes... the sun is very small compared to some stars... Also, it would take more then 10 THOUSAND Earths stacked side by side to cover the distance from the Earth to the sun!!
    • colmore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect20/diam2x.jpg

      The sun ain't nuthin'. And that only shows the largest stars that we're damn sure of... theory and less direct observation both suggest MUCH larger masses of buring gas.
    • CaptRR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thats allot of hydrogen.
  • MichaelW2, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13didnt know mars was that small.
  • jfair, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20"Basically it's models of the stars in our solar system"
    Think about that. Read it twice. Really? How many stars are there in our solar system?
    • gfw123, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4I don't think *they* get it.
    • DiggCommando, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12*listens to the sound of rational thought being suspended*

      Remember that statistic showing that most americans don't *know* that the SUN is a STAR?
    • Techlifter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8It's sad just how true this is. A month or two ago, the boyfriend actually asked me why the Moon was so much smaller of a star than the Sun. Oy...at least he's cute.
    • wrinkles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1One that we know of. Maybe two. http://www.binaryresearchinstitute.org/
    • drigz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you can't see it from within the solar system, it's not a proper star IMO.
  • xdjyoshx, on 10/12/2007, -17/+4Wow instead of sending men to Mars, we should send them to uranus.
  • ArcusOfSV, on 10/12/2007, -11/+3Dam I need to look at real estate futures on Jupiter. If that market opens my land value is going to go way the hell down.

    Digg for cool factor.

    • DiggCommando, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Good luck with that; Jupiter and the other gas giants are thought to have almost no solid ground, and the temperature on that small rocky core is going to be quite hot (over 20,000 K to be precise).
    • dave11388, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10It's going to be hard to sell land on Jupiter considering it has a small rocky core and is mainly composed of gas and liquid.
    • PDubNYC, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Not to mention that Jupiter is made up of mostly gas and liquid and has a small, rocky core.

      Had to do it, sorry. It just looked like the 2 previous posters got their info from the exact same source.
    • LoungeActx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Not to mention gravity on Jupiter will crush you into a fine powder instantaneously
  • shadcrkd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Since the site is dying...

    http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/5851/19rw1.jpg
    http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/8241/21dc3.jpg
    http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/8462/37bi.jpg

    Thats kind of amazing though..makes us feel like ants.
    • warmonger48, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Ants? More like a single celled bacteria
    • marnaq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13I still feel like an earthling.
  • warmonger48, on 10/12/2007, -5/+6When we finally get our butts off this rock and start using the resources of other planets imagine the amount of energy that can be harnessed...
    • fletchowns, on 10/12/2007, -8/+11Yeah, I can't wait for the human race to ruin another planet.
    • warmonger48, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I think that when we can finally reach out that far I don't think we'll be ruining planets anymore.
    • abadbronc, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Knowing humans, just enough energy to blow us the ***** up...
    • warmonger48, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Nah, probably not. If there's any blowing up it'll happen right here on good old terra firma. For us to make it on other planets we are going to need a global effort and I think someday we'll have the world on board as one united humanity. Sad part is we'll never live to see it, or will our great-great-great-great-------great grandchildren....
    • mc900ftjesus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7How exactly does someone ruin something that really had no purpose in the beginning?

      Humans only care about the Earth because we live here and if we kill it we're done. Outside or our giant ego trip, the earth has no purpose and neither does the life on it. Nothing about earth is important or special in the grand scheme. In fact, in the grand scheme the sun will expire and anything that might still be on earth will be gone. What does it matter then? The same as it does now, but your giant human "we're important" ego won't be in the way.
    • fletchowns, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Why are you talking like you even know what the grand scheme is? Nobody does.

      One thing is for certain...pretty much every species on earth helps another species survive and continue on, except for humans...we consume massive amounts of resources and pollute ungodly amounts durastically altering the face of the earth.
    • sapo916, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Time to expand the human race, 8 billion isnt enough for my mission. I think Ill take about 1 billion to Mars as a Starting Course.
  • Demarche, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19"Space, is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen ..."
    • EODMpink, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2HHGTTG?
    • CaptRR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Sooo.... what you are saying is that in space their is allot of... well... space.
  • analdisco, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3They should actually make physical models of these. It's a much better way to explain in school the size of the other planets and the sun. I always had trouble picturing the numbers when I was learning that stuff.

    Pretty interesting stuff. Dugg.
    • dpk87, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3But pluto would keep getting lost.
    • Xinareiaz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2And the sun would take a whole closet to hold. I supose you could just get a beachball, paint it yellow and have a pea sized blue bead for the earth...
  • nerdler, on 10/12/2007, -21/+5What the hell is with the retarded posts and comments? Did the special ed. class get new computers?
    • santiago1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6 Why? Are you understanding things better now?
  • witooo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Nice models... it be great to have something like this comparing the solar system and our galaxy with other galaxy's... and ultimatly (unless our galaxy would be to small to see) with all visible space.
    • Enitime, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"and ultimatly (unless our galaxy would be to small to see) with all visible space."

      Considering there are billions and billions of galaxies, millions of light years apart... "too small" is a safe bet.
    • Asshate, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Just go down to the beach.
  • patterson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1That's pretty mind boggling! I mean, although you've heard that jupiter is this many times bigger than Earth, and the sun that many, it's amazing to actually see it! Such a simple idea too! And thanks again shadcrkd for the mirror... I can't wait to read the article that goes with these!
  • redxninja, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2And the Sun is only an average-size star....
  • expresso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That "stars" mistake is probably because in Japanese "hoshi" means both "star" and "planet". I've seen some jp people get confused like "hmm, is there a difference?" :)
    • kokojie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Your post would make sense if the characters were Japanese, but they are actually Chinese.
  • BGog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Coral Cache link here:
    http://www.comagz.com.nyud.net:8080/webmagazine/story/proportions_how_small_we_are
  • BobbyOnions, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Take the ***** necktie off and submit to the size of the solar system instead of visualising it in monetary terms.
  • althe3rduww, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Its cool to see this although its nothing new to me. Didn't you guys have models of the planet and star scales in class when you were kids? Man my school must have been pretty advanced.
    • afghanwhiggle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1thinking the same thing, isn't this pretty elemetary? styrofoam balls etc...
    • hungryJonJon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Me too, I thought they'd also show some galaxy related stuff.
  • rouge606, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1We need to move to a bigger planet if that ever happens
  • siliconentity, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Do you think they're real models, or is it CG? I'm guessing the latter, because of the difficulty of painting these images onto actual spheres, whereas they are widely available online. Also the way the lighting looks, a number of sources, and the fact that they appear to be sitting on an infinite plane. Pretty, anyway!
  • chunkybastard4, on 10/12/2007, -8/+0i don't give a *****. whats the big fuss about??
  • largeboot, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7the sun is a mass of incandescent gas. a gigantic nuclear furnace.
    • Xinareiaz, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1Ta Da! Its captain obvious!
    • comrademikhail, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Am I the only one that caught the They Might Be Giants reference there?? Funny band :).
    • sapo916, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yea its in reference to that song, pretty damn funny.
    • diggerphelps, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2i can't belive this was dugg below zero.
      life is unfair.
    • n0tquitehuman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1not anymore... i dugg it back to zero =)
    • skidzilla, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Awesome band. :) These are the full lyrics. :)
      ------------------------------------------------------------------
      The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
      A gigantic nuclear furnace
      Where hydrogen is built into helium
      At a temperature of millions of degrees

      Yo ho, it's hot, the sun is not
      A place where we could live
      But here on earth there'd be no life
      Without the light it gives

      We need it's light
      We need it's heat
      We need it's energy
      Without the sun, without a doubt
      There'd be no you and me

      The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
      A gigantic nuclear furnace
      Where hydrogen is built into helium
      At a temperature of millions of degrees

      The sun is hot

      It is so hot that everything on it is a gas: iron, copper, aluminum, and many others.

      The sun is large

      If the sun were hollow, a million earths could fit inside. and yet, the sun is only a middle-sized star.

      The sun is far away

      About 93 million miles away, and that's why it looks so small.

      And even when it's out of sight
      The sun shines night and day

      The sun gives heat
      The sun gives light
      The sunlight that we see
      The sunlight comes from our own sun's
      Atomic energy

      Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine. the heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium.
      (*chorus)
      The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
      A gigantic nuclear furnace
      Where hydrogen is built into helium
      At a temperature of millions of degrees.
  • zezak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2These are totally out of proportion -- the Sun is VASTLY bigger (proportionally) than it is pictured. Also, our solar system has only one star (contrary to the article summary).
    • hokieaudi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Jupiter's diameter is approximately 140,000 km... the sun's diameter is about 1,400,000 km, so there's an order of magnitude size difference between Jupiter and the sun. My eyeball estimate says that the sun as pictured in the third image is roughly ten times the size of Jupiter, first planet on the left below the sun. Proportionally it looks fine to me.
    • Enitime, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"the Sun is VASTLY bigger (proportionally) than it is pictured."

      No, it looks about right. In the last picture the earth is about 2 pixels, and the sun about 200 pixels.

      The sun's diameter is 109 times that of the earth.
  • Tommstein, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3"the stars in our solar system"

    Did we get a new one recently or something?
    • Tommstein, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I guess that must have offended our less scientifically-literate readers.
  • Bakagamer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Go ahead, send me through the total perspective vortex...
  • cybermage, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1This is when you wish you could actually EDIT a post before it makes it on the front page. Perhaps fix both the spelling AND the grammar problems? This post is typical of what is wrong with America today.
  • vann, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1

    Oh, and what other stars are there in our solar system, exactly?
  • molsen311, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1"models of the stars in our solar system..." um, there's only one star in our solar system. there are, however, other PLANETS.
  • i4detail, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Everybody sing!

    Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
    And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
    It's orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it's reckoned,
    The sun that is the source of all our power.
    The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
    Are moving at a million miles a day
    Through an outer spiral arm at forty thousand miles an hour
    Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.

    Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars,
    It's a hundred thousand lightyears side to side.
    It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand lightyears thick,
    But out by us it's just three thousand lightyears wide.
    We're thirty thousand lightyears from galactic central point,
    We go round every two hundred million years.
    And our galaxy is only one of millions and billions
    In this amazing and expanding universe.

    The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
    In all of the directions it can whiz.
    As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know;
    Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
    So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure,
    How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
    And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
    Cause there's bugger-all down here on earth!
    • rideagain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4don't forget to credit the song. That's the Monty Python if I remember correctly.
    • wilf_brim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5gg @ Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" I was thinking of the exact same thing when I saw the headline. Thats from the end of the movie, the song is performed by Erich Idle.

      Monty Python FTW.
    • male73, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2While we're at it, everybody sing:
      That's about the size, where you put your eyes
      That's about the size of it.
      When the big becomes the little ... huhum huhum huhum ... umm
      oops, forgot the rest but you know what I mean.
  • Reziarfg, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/7333/xbox2uh.jpg

    I'm sorry, I just couldn't help it ^_^
  • gwalbridge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Maaaan, some people here have their proportions and astronomical information WAY wrong.
  • mike007pk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Didn't you guys ever see "powers of ten". It's an old video showing proportions from subatomic to intergalactic... It's a little cheesy (made in the 60's I think) but it's cool to wrap your brain around those distances.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrUQboKx_KE
    • hdilemma, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Wow cool, I havn't seen that since 5th grade. I've always wanted to see that video again thanks.
    • skidzilla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Amazing video, thankyou.
  • heysuburbia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3My Very Energetic Mom Just Served Us Nine Pizza's

    MVEMJSUNP

    Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto

    Anybody learn this in grade school to remember the planets?
    • Enitime, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1When I was in grade school, Pluto was closer to the sun than Neptune.
    • heymark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Don't forget Planet X
  • TheRadioMan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The sun is a big ***** man.
  • ratbear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If an object were allowed to be the size of the plank length (10-33 centimeters, the smallest measurable distance physically possible), we would appear from their perspective as large as the entire universe appears to us. Think about that for awhile, bitch.
  • golhra, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Mars is a lot smaller compaired to Earth than I realized.

    Oh and where's Jupiter???
  • heymark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The size proportions may seem pretty large, but also think of the distances achieved between each of these rocks. Lots o' empty space.
  • qster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6it makes you wonder....how big fat chicks really are.
    • DWatch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1What does your mom have to do with this?
    • mzkw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Heh... I do never read those too late comments, but yours is great. +1
  • jpowell180, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Not to mention that Jupiter is made up of mostly gas and liquid and has a small, rocky core.

    Had to do it, sorry. It just looked like the 2 previous posters got their info from the exact same source."

    Don't you mean a core consisting of metallic hydrogen?
    • CaptRR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Metallic hydrogen huh? Wow gravity's a bitch.
  • n0tquitehuman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2damn, my dream of igniting Jupiter's gas to make a second sun has just been ruined. Seeing as how it's not big enough to produce as much light as the sun. I always thought it would be cool to see two suns in the sky.
    • gfixler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Being a total sun-loathing, night-owl, coding-type geek, I must heartily disapprove of this idea. Now 5 or 6 moons... that I could go for. Think of what that would do for surfers everywhere, not to mention the werewolves!
  • tackle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4For some reason... I had always thought Mars was bigger than Earth (I dont know why). Honestly, this comes as a total shock to me. It feels really weird.
  • DarkDays, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'd buy those models if I ever saw one.

    Except the Sun...
  • Crocodile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So, where do I go to see the little green men?
  • val8ntin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For anyone who claims they also have a render of the Solar System with proportional distances; it's impossible (I saw a lot of this in the comments of the actual site). To quote "A Short History of Nearly Everything":

    "it isn't possible, in any practical terms, to draw the solar system to scale....even if you shrank everything so that Jupiter was as small as a period at the end of this sentence, and Pluto was no bigger than a molecule, Pluto would still be over thirty-five feet away."

    Cheers.
    • DWatch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It is not practical to model this and be able to visualize it on a computer screen at real sizes and distances, all at the same time, but there is a real-life model of the solar system in Maine:

      http://www.umpi.maine.edu/info/nmms/solar/

      Its based on a scale of one-mile equals the distance of the sun to the Earth. Since the entire model is to scale, they had to be creative when modeling the Sun, as it would be too costly to construct a massive ball 3 stories high, so its just some arcs painted on the walls of a three story building at the University Maine at Presque Isle. That way, they could keep Pluto visible to the naked eye (its a marble sized rock on a plaque).

      The distance from the Sun to the model of the Earth is one mile, the distance from the sun to Pluto is 40 miles. To put things in perspective, the sun is around 3 stories high, the earth is about the size of your head, mars is about the size of your fist, and Jupiter is about the size of a small car.

      A google search turned up several other of these models, one is in Australia, one might be near you, it would be interesting to see one.
  • VeryBoredNow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If the Sun was 1 inch in diameter the nearest star would be 445 miles away.


    Ponder that for a second.
  •  

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