23 February 2023

Amazing statistic regarding the solar system and Milky Way

"If you scaled the Solar System to the size of a 10p piece, the Milky Way would be roughly the size of the United States."
--- from the "qikipedia" at QI website, Feb 17, 2023.

10 comments:

  1. 10p coin
    (1968–1992) 28.5 mm (1.122047 inch)
    (1992–present) 24.5 mm (0.9645669 inch)
    Also the Milky Way is a pimple on the universe's butt.
    xoxoxoBruce

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  2. It would take about 500 million years to walk from the sun to the outer edge of the solar system, with its roughly two light year radius. Something like if the sun was the size of an orange, the Oort belt would be a thousand miles away. Point being, the solar system is big. So, if it's the size of a coin on a land mass the size of the US, our galaxy is kinda big too. And now we're thinking there are two trillion+ galaxies, each with 200 billion solar systems, or so.

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  3. “Space [...] is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly 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.” - D. Adams

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  4. Coincidentally, Planetary Radio had a very similar "Random Space Fact" this week: If our solar system out to Neptune is the size of the Super Bowl's coin-toss coin, then the Alpha Centauri system would be four (American) football fields away; and the Milky Way galaxy at this scale would be bigger than North America.

    https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2023-martian-rock-collecting - around the 40:55 mark.

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  5. "every individual star you can see with the unaided eye, in all parts of the sky, lies within the confines of our Milky Way galaxy."
    That is, if you want to see outside the Milky Way, you need a telescope (or binocs, in some cases).

    https://earthsky.org/tonight/every-visible-star-is-within-milky-way/

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    Replies
    1. But there are some galaxies outside the Milky Way that are visible to the naked eye in a dark sky (Andromeda and maybe others).

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    2. Minnesotastan, yes, but every INDIVIDUAL star you can see is in our galaxy. Make sense?

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    3. Certainly. Unless perhaps if you are a pronghorn antelope.

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  6. The universe is not only crazier than we imagine, it is crazier than we can imagine.

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  7. When you consider that the "speed limit" of the universe is the speed of light, then something that is a million light-years away is not only in a different place...but a different time.

    That is, we can say that it is a million light years away...or we can say that it is a million years away (and actually much farther, since that matter did not travel there at the speed of light).

    It truly is a matter, it seems, of "another time, another place."

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