Relative Size and Distance in the Universe – Part 1

The universe is a fascinating place, mostly because of sizes and distances. The universe is inconceivably big. This is part 1 of a series I will be doing on this subject.

For my first comparison, here is a photo demonstrating the relative sizes of our Sun and the planets of our solar system.

You might ask, if the sun is really that much bigger than the Earth, how do we not burn up. Because, unlike this illustration, the distance to the Sun from Earth is much greater. If the Sun was the size of a basketball, the Earth, about the size of a sesame seed, would be 82 ft away.

The illustration shows our home (at the top). If the Sun is located at the front line of our property, the Earth would be even with the back edge of the patio in our back yard.

Our home is near Seattle, Washington. Here is where we get a first taste of the size of our universe.

Again, if the Sun were the size of a basketball in Seattle, the nearest star to our Sun would be Proxima Centauri. It would be the size of a shot put and would be located in……. Guyana, South America! If we would like to ever visit the nearest star, we would have to figure out how to fly our microscopic space ship to South America.

Needless to say, this begins to show how unfathomably big our universe is. Proxima Centauri is our next door neighbor at a distance of 4500 miles away on our model.