What is Digg?57 Comments
- AllnightChemist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Is that Pluto or a dead pixel? I can't tell.
- shakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"we did this in science class, to scale, using an orange, a basketball, a pea and a few other items"
How would you do that in class? If the basketball was the sun, Pluto would be over 1 KM away (Alpha Centauri -- the closest star that's not our sun -- would be 6922 KM away at that scale, which is a bit longer than Earth's radius).
Check it out at http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/
A basketball's diameter is 9.39 inches or 238.5 mm - holiday, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3haha Uranus is blue
- gymbrall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1shakin wrote: "How would you do that in class? If the basketball was the sun, Pluto would be over 1 KM away (Alpha Centauri -- the closest star that's not our sun -- would be 6922 KM away at that scale, which is a bit longer than Earth's radius)."
I'm guessing that they had someone walk over 1km away and gave him a sign that said "Pluto". And then everyone else stood on a hill and looked at the guy with the basketball, and then looked down the road at the guy with the pluto sign and marvelled at their insignificance in the universe, and then went home and watched Felicity. - Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1When I studied Astronomy in college I was troubled by how insignificant I am in the grand scheme of things. Then I realized that while I may not be the center of THE universe, I'm definately the center of MY universe.
Of course my universe could always use a few more heavenly bodies orbiting around nearby... - Quiescence, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Try this. Click and hold the arrow on the scroll bar. It takes around 8 minutes to arrive at the earth.. Is it just a coincidence?
- jburchel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nice to see the scale of things, but to imply that this makes us less relevant is lame. So size is the ultimate determiner of relevance in the universe then? Of all the untold trillions of tons of matter in this solar system and the rest of the universe at large, so far as I know, there are only a few precious tons of it, in the brain matter of human beings here on this "insignificant planet" that are capable of recognizing and understanding the rest of all of it. How is that for relevance? We are at the top of all of creation by any logical reckoning (which is sadly lacking throughout most of popular culture, and here on digg.com, obviously), and to suggest we are insignificant because the universe is physically more massive than us... well, it is just ignorant, and sad.
- ChanEilFhios, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The circumference of the Moon is shorter than Texas?!?!
The circumference of the Moon is about 10930km.
The radius of the Moon is about 1737km.
The width of Texas is about 1065km.
You're off by an order of magnitude. - Frayed_Knot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Space is big - really big - you just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Naikrovek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I assume the tiny dot on the VERY right is Mercury or the nearest star.
That's Pluto. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0o.O I feel small now
- awfulshot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i did something like this in my astronomy class. pretty amazing. especially the distance to the nearest star.
- TheCheeta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Nice job.
- rydawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0where's the kaboom? There's supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!
- Eradication, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I assume the tiny dot on the VERY right is Mercury or the nearest star.
- DogHumpsMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ithaca NY has a scale model of the solar system that starts downtown in the Commons and stretches through out the city as a memorial to Carl Sagan. It's a fun walk to each planet, especially if you are hitting the pubs along the way.
http://www.sciencenter.org/saganpw/ - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"The sun is owning us all."
Nah, the super massive black hole at the center of the universe p0//n$ us all. ;) - theman8631, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Pretty cool except pluto is much smaller then that. In reality it should be about 1 1/2 pixels. It is smaller then our moon and the moons circumfrence alone is shorter then the width of texas.
- blhack, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0does anybody else have firefox crash on load with this page? On linux?
- braydonf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Check out the short film, "Powers of Ten" by Ray & Charles Eames. Talk of scale!
- lexbaby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"moons circumfrence alone is shorter then the width of texas."
Our moon or Pluto's? Our moon's diameter is not quite the width of the continental United States. The circumfrence is then Pi x that distance. - spacenettnet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0that is awesome
- Woek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Pretty cool except pluto is much smaller then that. In reality it should be about 1 1/2 pixels. It is smaller then our moon and the moons circumfrence alone is shorter then the width of texas."
Texas' width is 11000 km? I don't think so... - unholy1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I never realised Uranus was so large!
- XxN3RDC0R3xX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0and also..
yea that page is damn cool - PaineW, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0No question... I need a bigger monitor.
- fani, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0They had something like this at the Rose Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in NY.
It is super cool. Its below the planetarium. They show the comparative scale from 10^-20 all the way to 10^20. Its very interesting.
They said if the Earth were a marble placed at the Rose planetarium then the edge of the solar system ( or milky way, not sure ) is in Boston ( some 300 miles away ) !!! - adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wow, it's been a while since I've been in a science class but I thought mars was bigger than the earth.
- fozzcorp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I hope we never piss Jupiter or Saturn off, they would beat us to a pulp in a straight fight lol.
- snoopy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Everyone does this in high school astronomy. Nothing new.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0WITH an ant colony...sorry for the syntax error. Where's the other civilizations? hmmmmm...ok I'll save that for another story.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Have you ever communicated to an ant colony Jburchel? lol
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0im gonna go to the apple store and look at this using the 30 inch displys
- teh_toaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+08 minutes of holding the scroll button?!
talk about spare time...;) - unholy1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0[quote]
Try this. Click and hold the arrow on the scroll bar. It takes around 8 minutes to arrive at the earth.. Is it just a coincidence?
[/quote]
Ah, but does it take 8 minutes, 20 seconds?
http://www.faqs.org/qa/qa-5320.html - JasonD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I made a Earth-Moon image to scale a while ago. I did it because many people don't realize the Moon is not right next to the Earth, like most pictures would make you believe:
http://www.jasondoucette.com/misc/earthmoon.html
Rather interesting... - Mongoose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wow, that's ridiculously cool!
- fennec, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hey! I think I can see my house!
- da_bradler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've seen this before, but still gets a dig, insane
- Jugm123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0to hard to see anything
- binarypower, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My monitor is too dirty to see these planets...
- sporkman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Is that Pluto or a dead pixel? I can't tell." hahah, you sure PWNED Pluto, and all the people that live on it, oh wait....
- altidude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0>to hard to see anything
I just saw Uranus.
Cool site. - LittleOni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Makes you feel realy puny. wow. Nice Douglas Adams reference, by the way, Frayed_Knot
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Very nice.. I'de be interested in seeing this implemented in flash and java as well. Good find!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Nothing new Snoopy? Bend over and grab your ankles my friend. I'll give you 'NEW', lol!
- Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0However I could have lived happily without the knowledge that Uranus is big and green.
- XxN3RDC0R3xX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0anybody know how to somehow save the whole page as a jpeg or something? so i could resize it small enough for the whole thing to fit on the screen at once?
i know how to save the page.. but i need it as one big resizable image. - Gremlinclr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Cool.
+Digg - terafunker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Man, I really need a larger monitor!
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