I grabbed the below from
here, but wanted to paraphrase post some of the more interesting bits. This is how to make your own quick scale model of the solar system you live in (or at least, most of us in our right minds).
Here\'s the sizes you need:
Sun-any ball, diameter 8.00 inches
Mercury-a pinhead, diameter 0.03 inch
Venus-a peppercorn, diameter 0.08 inch
Earth-a second peppercorn
Mars-a second pinhead
Jupiter-a chestnut or a pecan, diameter 0.90 inch
Saturn-a hazelnut or an acorn, diameter 0.70 inch
Uranus-a peanut or coffeebean, diameter 0.30 inch
Neptune-a second peanut or coffeebean
Pluto- a third pinhead (or smaller, since Pluto is the smallest planet)
Then, you go outside and start walking off spaces:
Put the \"sun\" down. Walk 10 paces.
Put \"Mercury\" down. Walk 9 paces.
Put \"Venus\" down. Walk 7 paces.
Put \"Earth\" down.
Look back at what you\'ve already done. That\'s a lot of empty space. It really hits home when you truly do this physically rather than think about it in your head.
Walk 14 more paces.
Put \"Mars\" down. Damn, that\'s far.
Walk 95 more paces and put \"Jupiter\" down.
Walk another 112 paces and that\'s \"Saturn\".
Walk another 249 paces and you\'re at \"Uranus\".
Stop giggling.
Then another 281 paces and you can put \"Neptune\" down.
Finally, another 242 paces and you can put down lowly non-planet \"Pluto\".
Now, this is my own stuff, just to screw with everybody\'s head:
Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to us. It is roughly 4.22 light years away. In order to put it on the above scaled model, do you know how far you must walk?
I\'ll wait.
It would be 4072 miles (roughly 6100km for our metric friends). Trying to find something equivalent was difficult, but it would be like walking from London to Knoxville, TN.
So, the universe is mostly empty of anything somebody could sit on. But I think that there must be some intelligent life out there. The pitiful thing is, we\'ll probably never find it. I really hope to work on building the planet finding telescopes that take a shot at it at least. Hell, just a good picture of a planet around another star would be enough for me to hang a career on.
