

What happens if you shrink the Earth to the size of a tennis ball? - squeakynick
http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/april22012/index.html

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AngryParsley
I like to take advantage of a coincidence in units to visualize interstellar
distances.

1 mile is 63,360 inches. 1 light year is almost 63,250 Astronomical Units.

So if you scale everything down by a factor of 6 trillion, Terra would be an
inch from Sol and Alpha Centauri would be 4 miles away. Voyager 1 would be 120
inches away, travelling at 3.5 inches per year.

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dstorrs
Ten or fifteen years ago, they actually built a scale model of the Solar
System up in up in northern Maine. As you drive north on Rt 1A, there's a
particular rest stop with a shadowbox on the wall. Inside is a very small
small sphere (size of a large marble). The label says "Pluto", with no further
details. Keep driving until you get to Caribou or Limestone (I forget which)
and you'll pass all the other planets. Some are inside (where there is a
convenient building at the right distance), some are on purpose-built display
poles by the roadside. When you get to the end, you can find the Sun painted
on a wall -- or, at least, the very small arc of it that fits on a wall that
size.

The planets are all carefully painted to look as accurate as possible and
quite attractive. There's no explanation anywhere, you just have to be "in the
know". It's an awesome treasure hunt to find them all.

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garethsprice
Sweden has a large scale model of this with a 65cm Earth and a 110m sun, with
a total length of over 500 miles:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System>

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rsanchez1
As does Illinois, only the scale is 1:125 million and it only extends to
Pluto:

<http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11386>

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acqq
Unfortunately the "Don't stand so close to me" picture has the wrong size of
the Sun -- the width of the football field is around 50 meters, so the Sun in
his scale (around 7 meter for Earth the size of a tennis ball) would span only
one seventh of the shorter side of the seventh football field in the picture.

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waxjar
The earth, when shrunk down to the size of a billiard ball, is also smoother
than a billiard ball:
[http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_earth_smoother_than_a_billiard_...](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_earth_smoother_than_a_billiard_ball)
:)

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DHowett
I was more expecting to see the absurd results of shrinking the Earth to the
size of a tennis ball (as "what happens") instead of "what else do we have to
do to keep scale?"

Not to say that the article wasn't interesting- it certainly was!

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platz
Me too, such as, is it black hole time yet?!

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ssdsa
The "Deutsches Museum" in Munich, Germany has got a permanent outdoor exhibit
exactly of this kind. Some pictures are here: [http://www.deutsches-
museum.de/ausstellungen/naturwissenscha...](http://www.deutsches-
museum.de/ausstellungen/naturwissenschaft/astronomie/planetenweg/) You have to
walk more than 4 kilometers from the sun to the "edge" of our solar systems.
It's a great thing to educate children or a school class.

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thangalin
Here are a couple of my takes on illustrating relative sizes:

1\. [http://davidjarvis.ca/dave/gallery/star-
sizes/poster-04_sm.p...](http://davidjarvis.ca/dave/gallery/star-
sizes/poster-04_sm.png)

2\. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM0JMaM_tdQ>

The first is a picture of the planets and stars. The second is a video fly-by
of the solar system.

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rollypolly
It's always good to be reminded how amazing it was to put someone on the moon
with 1960s technology.

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Agathos
If you're also shrinking all the tennis balls on Earth, make sure you save
their initial size and compare the Earth against that. Otherwise you end up
with an infinite loop as size(Earth) > size(tennisBall) is always true.

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CJefferson
I'm now tempted to get my local science museum to set this up, at least until
Mars. Would help understand to see it in real life I think.

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dsr_
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system_model#Scale_models...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_system_model#Scale_models_in_various_locations)

will tell you if there's one already close to you.

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pkulak
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Ob0xR0Ut8>

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ABS
we all die?

ok, sorry :-)

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andrewflnr
I seem to recall that's about the size you have to shrink it to to get it to
collaps into a black hole.

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burgerbrain
The earth's Schwarzchild radius is about 9mm. However tennis ball sized might
be neutron star territory, I'm not sure.

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drivebyacct2
I genuinely think that those who reject science (about space, evolution, etc)
are largely unable to grasp these vast quantities. The idea of evolution over
"millions of years" is unimaginable to them because they don't understand how
100 year lifespan of a human is nothing compared to a million years or a
hundred million years.

