Subscribe by EmailBill Nye Demonstrates Distance Between Planets
November 25, 2009 by Geeks are Sexy | 1 comment
In the following video, Bill Nye demonstrates a scale model of the solar system by riding his bike across a barren plain.
Richard Dawkins wrote this about our planetary system:
Find a large open space, and take a soccer ball to represent the sun. Put the ball down and walk ten paces in a straight line, stick a pin in the ground. The head of the pin stands for the planet Mercury. Take another nine paces beyond Mercury and put down a peppercorn to represent Venus.
Seven paces on, drop another peppercorn for Earth. One inch from Earth, another pin head represents the moon, the furthest place, lets remember, that we have so far reached.
Fourteen more paces to little Mars and ninety five paces to giant Jupiter, a ping pong ball. One hundred and twelve paces further, Saturn is a marble.
No time to deal with the outer planets, except to say the distances are much larger. But how far would you have to walk to reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri? Pick up another football to represent it and set off on a walk for four thousand two hundred miles.
As for the nearest other galaxy, Andromeda, don’t even think about it.
[Via Reddit]
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We had a student at the local High School do this sort of thing along the bike trail heading out of town. I rode the distance to Pluto and back, Pluto was 3.67 Miles from the starting point.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lameazoid/sets/72157594203658473/