• state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de
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    14 天前

    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.

    • shrodes@lemmy.world
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      14 天前

      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

      • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de
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        14 天前

        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.

          • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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            14 天前

            A 70cm diameter soccer ball (>2 ft across) would be kinda fun. Except headers the CTE would be even worse!

            • podian@piefed.social
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              14 天前

              All Very true facts. I admit I was and am still taken aback by the measurement and extrapolation of linear distances using… circumference.

              • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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                14 天前

                Yeah it’s a weird way to make the distances sound shorter than pi*(a measurement we all can visualize).

              • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de
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                10 天前

                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.