we reduce the sun and planets to a more conceivable smaller scale.
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| Photo: G.W. Ritchey. |
| THE NEBULA SEEN EDGE-ON Note the central core which, through millions of years, is cooling to solidity |
If then we represent our Earth as a little ball of one inch diameter, the sun would be a big globe nine feet across and 323 yards away, that is about a fifth of a mile, four or five minutes' walking. The moon would be a small pea two feet and a half from the world. Between earth and sun there would be the two inner planets, Mercury and Venus, at distances of one hundred and twenty-five and two hundred and fifty yards from the sun. All round and about these bodies there would be emptiness until you came to Mars, a hundred and seventy-five feet beyond the earth, Jupiter nearly a mile away, a foot in diameter, Saturn, a little smaller two miles off, Uranus four miles off and Neptune six miles off. Then nothingness and nothing-
