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Golfing With God
Oct. 27th, 2011 02:14 pmEvery once in a while, I get fixated on a really weird concept. For some reason, the current concept was "scale models of the Solar System." Finding myself with a little time, a calculator and an Internet connection, I did a little noodling. I think the results are interesting, and are presented for your amusement.
Start with imagining a Solar System done at the scale of 1 inch = 10,000 miles. This results in an Earth roughly one inch in diameter. Actually, .79 inch, but close enough. Call it a golf ball. Our moon, then, is a .16 inch ball, roughly the size of a pea, 25 inches away. If God were playing golf with whomever He plays with, it would be a gimme putt. It's also the farthest point we've sent humans to.
On that same 1 inch = 10,000 miles scale, the Sun, our local star, is a 7.25 foot diameter ball 775 feet away. Or, in golf terms, a garden shed 258 yards out - a short par 4. Mars (yes, I've got a Mars fixation - sue me) is a ball .4 inches in diameter, and never gets closer to Earth than 508 feet. When its on the other side of the Sun, it's 2,058 feet away. Put another way, in our scale Solar System, Mars is a marble that varies between 169 yards away - a long par 3 - to 686 yards away - out of even Tiger Wood's reach.
So, in our scale model / cosmic golf course, where is Alpha Centauri, our nearest star? At 1 inch = 10,000 miles, the Centauri system is 40,719 miles away! We couldn't fit this scale model on our planet!
If we drop the scale to 1 inch = 100,000 miles, then the sun is an 8 inch beachball, Earth's an oversized dot 80 feet away, and the Centauri system is a pair of beach balls (Centauri is a double-star system) 4,071 miles away. That's just a few more miles than the air miles between New York and Los Angeles.
Space is big and empty. If you want to know the answer to Fermi's Paradox (if there are aliens, why aren't they here?) contemplate this scale model. Space is big, and really empty.
Start with imagining a Solar System done at the scale of 1 inch = 10,000 miles. This results in an Earth roughly one inch in diameter. Actually, .79 inch, but close enough. Call it a golf ball. Our moon, then, is a .16 inch ball, roughly the size of a pea, 25 inches away. If God were playing golf with whomever He plays with, it would be a gimme putt. It's also the farthest point we've sent humans to.
On that same 1 inch = 10,000 miles scale, the Sun, our local star, is a 7.25 foot diameter ball 775 feet away. Or, in golf terms, a garden shed 258 yards out - a short par 4. Mars (yes, I've got a Mars fixation - sue me) is a ball .4 inches in diameter, and never gets closer to Earth than 508 feet. When its on the other side of the Sun, it's 2,058 feet away. Put another way, in our scale Solar System, Mars is a marble that varies between 169 yards away - a long par 3 - to 686 yards away - out of even Tiger Wood's reach.
So, in our scale model / cosmic golf course, where is Alpha Centauri, our nearest star? At 1 inch = 10,000 miles, the Centauri system is 40,719 miles away! We couldn't fit this scale model on our planet!
If we drop the scale to 1 inch = 100,000 miles, then the sun is an 8 inch beachball, Earth's an oversized dot 80 feet away, and the Centauri system is a pair of beach balls (Centauri is a double-star system) 4,071 miles away. That's just a few more miles than the air miles between New York and Los Angeles.
Space is big and empty. If you want to know the answer to Fermi's Paradox (if there are aliens, why aren't they here?) contemplate this scale model. Space is big, and really empty.
