Phil Plait

Imagine the distance between Earth and the sun is one inch. How far away do you think the nearest star is?

Nope. Try again. Still wrong. Again? Nope. Huh uh.

Space is WAY bigger than you think.

https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/space-is-way-bigger-than-you-think

Space is way bigger than you think

Go ahead and think about it. Nope, it’s bigger. Try again. Nope, still too small. This game can go on a long time.

Bad Astronomy Newsletter
Jun 8 at 2:38pmWeb
Show threadDan Sugalski1d ago
@badastro Yow. And here I thought it was a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's peanuts compared to space.
Show threadJeff1d ago
@wordshaper @badastro
That's mind bogglingly big.
Show threadLester Ward1d ago
@badastro If you built a physical model of the Earth and sun at that scale, Earth wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye. It would be just over two microns. Sun would be about 236 microns.
Show threadfarlukar1d ago
@badastro Um, one inch?
Show threadjaj1d ago
@badastro I find that really depressing.
Show threadbubbajet1d ago

@badastro I was keeping up until the description of how far the Milky Way extends. Broke my brain right there. It truly is mind boggling.

Need coffee to recover.

Show threadBodhipaksa1d ago
@badastro My mental arithmetic gave me 30 miles. Apparently I'm really bad at mental arithmetic!
Show threadNKT1d ago
@badastro 376k inches? 6 minutes from the sun is one inch, so 4.2x365x24x60, divided by 6. Why are we using inches??
Show threadNKT1d ago
@badastro Ah, I see why we are using inches.
Show threadCome On Giant Asteroid!1d ago

@badastro

You may *think* it's a long way to the chemist ...

Show threadFurryBeta1d ago
@badastro Let’s see: P-Centauri is about 4.3 light years away (iirc). Earth is 8 light minutes away from Sol. So yeah, that’s a lot of inches!! About 23.5K worth if I did my math correctly
Show threadderptron1d ago

@badastro Space is in fact smaller than I thought.

I expected that the closest start would be a distance greater than the circumference of the Earth but within the solar system.

It's actually well within walking distance. I can just take a nice stroll on down to Proxima Centauri and back. Maybe get an ice cream cone. They have ice cream at the docks.

Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE1d ago
@badastro I was going to say "four miles" (just something "everybody knows" since I was a child) and then I read the article ...
Show threadthedoh 🇨🇦23h ago
@badastro @kboyd longer than the walk down the chemists, that's for sure!
Show threadEnema Cowboy23h ago
@badastro But use a scale USians can understand? How many refrigerators lined up back-to-back would that be? 😆
Show threadWesDym17h ago

@badastro I've often pointed people to the below link (mirrored in a few places, I believe), which offers an accurately relative impression of the real distance between major objects in our star system. Appropriately, there is no way to 'jump' ahead or go faster.

[EDIT: I just figured out that I was wrong about that: You CAN skip or accelerate, sort of. But it still gives a good sense of realistic scale.]

https://www.joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel - A tediously accurate map of the solar system

Show threadVolker12h ago

@badastro
Of my math is correct, it's close to 300000 inches (1440/8*365*4.x).

However, I have no idea what this is in reasonable units.