Some of the fonts look horrible in FF20/Linux x86-64..
If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
161–170 of 216 posts
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#162Is anyone else a little bothered by the fact that the reported speed was 1/5 the speed of light, yet the flyby necessarily increased to well over the speed of light in order to actually get you to Mars before you got bored and closed the tab? Traveling at the speed of light would have taken 5-20 minutes. Traveling slower than that would have taken even longer...
Speed of light: 1.07925285 × 10e9 km/h Reported speed: 200,000 km/h So more like 1/5000 the speed of light. But as pointed out below the reported speed may be way off. I wonder if a mistake about the speed of light was made; it's about 300,000 km per second .
Right, but the original comment is also quite right that the speed is being misreported and the actual speed you're going (reported as 7000 pixels per second) is 3x the speed of light:
(12742 km) / (100 px) * (7000 px)/s / c = 2.975Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm planning to head over tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes.
Are you there yet?
Yes. HN is loading slower than normal, however, so you'll have to wait for a full assessment. This whole three-way handshake thing is not such a great idea from Mars.
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#164Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#165This is the first time I've actually been able to comprehend the perspective of distances so big they don't mean much as a number. Thank you.
You can easily build an in 1:2e9 scale replica of the Solar System. You'll just need a 90cm sphere to use as the Sun, some 4-5 km of area do arrange things and a paquimeter for measuring the planets. At this scale, everything is just about as big/small as one can manipulate. Bu you won't be able to place the Voyager in there. For that you'll need a car and a road trip.
I was looking for the one in SE England, which turned out to be the Otford model. It makes for a pleasant afternoon hike.
But in the process I came across this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System_model
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
An extrapolation from the weak magnetosphere [1] I'd guess. 1: http://www.universetoday.com/36161/core-of-venus/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Internal_structure
I don't follow.
What I posted above is simply a layman's summary of all the same things cited in your link.
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the value of this is in its focus and simplicity. There have been other websites using zooms and/or scrolling to visualize scale differences (e.g. http://scaleofuniverse.com/ ), but this is an elegant statement about just one fact, and I think that's more likely to get the ball rolling in someone's brain and amaze them than inundating them with trivia all at once (but thanks for the trivia just the same :).
Every time I see that page it makes me realise just how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things, and how badly I really want to go exploring everything that is out there.
Yet you could spend an entire lifetime exploring everything that is 'here', and still not manage it.
Space is unfathomably big, and we are a grain of sand on the beach of the universe. But that grain of sand contains enough complexity and variety to fascinate for a practically unlimited period of time.
Mars is cool, and grand, and inconceivably different. I'd rather see the cherry blossoms in Japan, or go for a walk in the outback, or see tierra del fuego (sp?). And really, it's not even just the big things on my (long) list, but the billion other little things that one can do and see on this world given time and resources to wander from place to place exploring and experiencing.
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#168One thing that's always gotten to me about this distance is what it means for communication latency. Mars is 20 light-minutes away. If we sent colonists, communication would be a 40-minute round trip. No phone calls home, no way to have a chat with friends or loved ones; at best they could send a message, and wait 40 minutes for a reply. That's far away.
if we could stretch a stick as long as the distance from earth to mars and use it to tap on mars ground something like a morse code to communicate, would that message be faster than a wifi message traveling at the speed of light?
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#169Cool site, but it's "If the Earth were 100 pixels wide, ..." http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/subjunctive-verbs-was-i...
It's the only time we get to use a different word to express the subjunctive mood in English.
Re: If the Earth were 100 pixels wide
#170Oh this is fantastic! My father teaches astronomy to kids (he has a mobile planetarium that he takes around schools [1]) and one of the main pain points he has mentioned is communicating a sense of scale to them. This is elegant because it mixes the concept of "imagine this orange is the earth, mars would be in " within the constraints of a web page. Kids have difficulty visualising distances in an abstract way - but…
That is super cool! Can you please ask him to put some larger images on there because I only get these tiny little thumbs.
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