I've been re-reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Everyone should read it.
Did you know if you sat Pluto on top of the USA it would only cover about half? Its tiny. Its smaller than our moon. I thought Pluto was the edge of the solar system, but there is actually stuff orbiting our sun that is fifty thousand times further away than Pluto.
I thought that the diagram of the solar system in the front of my Jacaranda atlas was to scale. I have always pictured it being this way when I read about space stuff. In fact, if Jupiter was the size of a pea, Pluto would be about 2km away and it would be the size of a bacterium. I would quite like to make a proper scale model. But if the biggest planet was a pea and the whole shebang was 4 or 5km long there would have to be some big arrows pointing out the planets.
I'll get back to you on the scale model.
2 comments:
I've enjoyed reading your posts. Have you seen the site: www.wohba.com ? It is filled with fascinating stuff on the Mars probes, etc. Scroll down to it. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Bonita. I don't know how old this comment is, its wierd it goves you a time of day but no date. Wohba is a great site and I haven;t looked at it for ages - will check it out again soon.
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