Simple site to scale distances in the universe

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Check it out here. This simple site lets you input a value into a size or distance, which it then uses to scale to other well-known bodies throughout the universe, including the universe itself.

Here are some quick examples of the quick use one can find with it:

First take Venus. It has a diameter of 12,104 km. Now let's scale that down and make Venus one cm in diameter. That makes the sun 90 metres away, the moon is now 32 cm away from us (the site says from the sun at the moment but that's a typo that will soon be changed), Proxima Centauri is 33 km away, and the observable universe is still a full 76 light years across.

If we make the sun a single millimetre, the observable universe is now just...630 billion km in length.

Or let's say I'm explaining to someone how large and far away the moon is and I have a basketball to demonstrate the Earth. The basketball is 24 cm in diameter, so to demonstrate the moon I'll need a sphere 6.5 cm in diameter (roughly a baseball), and it will be placed 7 metres away.

I think I'll email the author and see if he'll be interested in an asteroid density vs. size to calculate gravity program as well.

0 comments:

  © Blogger templates Newspaper by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP