“If the Sun were shrunk to the size of a white blood cell (about ten times smaller than the smallest object a human can see), the Earth would be the size of a small RNA virus particle. At that scale, the orbit of Neptune would be just about 2 inches in diameter. Our Milky Way Galaxy would then be… ready… the size of North America and our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda would be 91,000 miles away.”
Which blows me away (assuming it’s true)! But this was an answer to a question about the scale of the observable universe, which as you can see it didn’t do. So along this same scale, how big would the observable universe be?
Okay, assuming that math to be correct (and I’m not digging into it at the moment) the Andromeda galaxy is around 2.5 million light years away. The most distant observed galaxy is around 13.4 billion light years away, or 5.360 times the Andromeda distance. Giving a scale distance of around 487 million miles for that galaxy (and ignoring inflation of the universe that has taken place since the light left that galaxy.)
Your scale factor is about 7E -15, so the observable universe would be about 6E 12 m in your model, which is pretty close to the diameter of the orbit of Neptune.
I guess this doesn’t really help visualizing the size…
My Dad claimed that humans were at the midpoint of the smallest and largest scales, therefore humans are special, therefore Jeebus. Based on that summary, it looks like bacteria are closer to the (geometric) midpoint between the Planck Length and the observable universe. I, for one, welcome our new prokaryotic overlords.
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
Our town (Madison, WI) has the solar system laid out. Starting near the middle of town is a two-foot diameter “sun” plaque, a block or so away is a sign explaining Mercury and showing its relative size (a small ball).
Then, following the commuter bike path, comes Venus, Earth, Mars, then a long ride (but they threw in Ceres*) to Jupiter, followed by Saturn (basketball size)… by the time you get to Uranus, you’re out of town, and by Neptune you’re past the next town…
And marble-sized Pluto is 23 miles away (in Mount Horeb, where you can put your kickstand down outside The Grumpy Troll Brewpub…).
Really gives you the feeling of all that empty space between planets.
*based on an Isaac Asimov line, I always say “Wow, I made it to the World Ceres!” even if I’m all alone.
If you disregard “Planck length” as not corresponding to any object (though “Strings” are about this size if they exist at all) then man is about smack-on at the geometric mean between smallest (neutrino) and largest (galactic supercluster) !
I don’t know about Jeebus though. Did Godot ever show up?
That just goes to show us how huge, and how empty, space is.
Think of rocks and icicles as far away as Pluto and the comets, and the biggest thing pulling on them that tiny yellow star that looks like a pinpoint of light…
Nothing on Earth, even Sweden and Wisconsin, would fit a comprehensible model for us 0 order of magnitude guys.
However, as a matter of calculation, you could choose which subset in septimus’s ordering and figure out the positions.
In fact, more subsets could be accommodated if the Earth were apportioned conceptually as a spherical slide rule–a notional nomogram–a nice word pair, IMHO, with geographic signposts.
