Ask Science
Ask a science question, get a science answer.
Community Rules
Rule 1: Be respectful and inclusive.
Treat others with respect, and maintain a positive atmosphere.
Rule 2: No harassment, hate speech, bigotry, or trolling.
Avoid any form of harassment, hate speech, bigotry, or offensive behavior.
Rule 3: Engage in constructive discussions.
Contribute to meaningful and constructive discussions that enhance scientific understanding.
Rule 4: No AI-generated answers.
Strictly prohibit the use of AI-generated answers. Providing answers generated by AI systems is not allowed and may result in a ban.
Rule 5: Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
Adhere to community guidelines and comply with instructions given by moderators.
Rule 6: Use appropriate language and tone.
Communicate using suitable language and maintain a professional and respectful tone.
Rule 7: Report violations.
Report any violations of the community rules to the moderators for appropriate action.
Rule 8: Foster a continuous learning environment.
Encourage a continuous learning environment where members can share knowledge and engage in scientific discussions.
Rule 9: Source required for answers.
Provide credible sources for answers. Failure to include a source may result in the removal of the answer to ensure information reliability.
By adhering to these rules, we create a welcoming and informative environment where science-related questions receive accurate and credible answers. Thank you for your cooperation in making the Ask Science community a valuable resource for scientific knowledge.
We retain the discretion to modify the rules as we deem necessary.
view the rest of the comments
All the planets in the solar system can fit between the earth and the moon
Australia is wider than the moon. If earth had the size of a football (soccer), the moon would be about 7m away. If the sun had a diameter of 1m, Neptune would be 5.6km away. In that scale model, the next star would be placed in the outer planets. Space is insanely big.
I’m confused what you mean by wider. As far as I can tell Australia is about 4000km wide and the moon’s circumference is about 11000km
EDIT: it’s late and I am dumb, I take it you mean the moon’s diameter! 3474km
7 meters?
I looked up the circumference of a football and it said about 70cm. As the moon is about 10 times the circumference of the earth away, that'd put the moon at 7m away.
Diameter or circumference?
A 70cm diameter soccer ball (>2 ft across) would be kinda fun. Except headers the CTE would be even worse!
All Very true facts. I admit I was and am still taken aback by the measurement and extrapolation of linear distances using... circumference.
Yeah it’s a weird way to make the distances sound shorter than pi*(a measurement we all can visualize).
You could calculate it more accurately, of course. But the relationship between earth's circumference and the distance to the moon is roughly 1:10, purely by coincidence, making it easy to calculate an estimate when scaling earth up or down.
That's insane when you really think about it.
I doubt we'll ever leave our system
If you count Voyager, we already have.
Otherwise ... Yea, I'll be surprised if society in general even makes it to 2100 unscathed.
Voyager is fantastic, but it’s still way, way closer to the solar system than anything else.
An excerpt from Wikipedia:
Yes, and they are still on a galactic orbit, not a solar orbit. They are, unquestionably, the first things we're sending off, regardless of whether they arrive anywhere substantial.
This is why I don't get excited to hear about the discovery of 'Earth-like planets' 182 light years away.
30 years ago we didn't even know for sure if planets around other stars was a common thing and had no expectation we'd actually know their chemical compositions
Bad news with the AMOC modeling yesterday. 2100 is starting to seem optimistic...
sometimes
And murcury is the closest planet to all of them!
Gonna need a fact check on this one.
Are we counting the gas of Jupiter or just the solid core? Same for the others
Actually, Jupiter doesn't have a solid core the way you think! The gases just get so dense at the core that it starts to behave like a solid. You couldn't, like, blow away all the clouds and have some rock to wander around on.
I assumed the hydrogen had become condensed into a crystal solid? Or at least, that's the current theory
Whole planets. You do have to cant Saturn because the rings don’t fit
thats why you just flip Saturn so the rings unobtrusively stick up and down and not horizontal
they're ephemeral anyway