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| The Vastness of the Universe
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I have always loved Astronomy and spent many a night peering through the lens of a telescope. But a familiarity with the constellations, locations of major stars, nebulas and sister galaxies… still does not give you the perspective of the vastness of the universe…or even our small planetary system. Most people’s idea of our Solar System comes from diagrams of the Sun and planets in books. Or maybe you saw a representation of them in the planetarium or maybe a revolving model that shows the planets rotations around the sun (an orrery). This still is a very poor representation of the size of the planets and moons as well has the great distances between them. In 1989 Guy Ottewell came up with a classic exercise for visualizing just how BIG our Solar System is, called “Earth as a peppercorn”. Demonstrated outside, it should be used in every school…and church. As I stood in awe of the vastness of even our own Solar System, I thought of the passage in Psalms 8:4, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” First, you collect objects to represent the bodies in the Solar System.
Sun… any ball 8 inches
Mercury….a pinhead 0.03 inch
Venus….a peppercorn 0.08 inch
Earth….another peppercorn
Mars… a second pinhead
Jupiter… a chestnut 0.90 inch
Saturn… an acorn 0.70 inch
Uranus…. A peanut or coffeebean 0.30 inch
Neptune….a second peanut or coffeebean
Pluto…another pinhead..or smaller
The earth is 8,000 miles wide. The peppercorn is eight hundreds of an inch wide. The sun is 800,000 miles wide. So, one inch in this model represents a hundred thousand miles in reality. OK?
This means that one yard (36 inches) represents 3, 600,000 miles. Now the distance between the Sun and the earth is 93 million miles. That is 26 yards (or paces).
So, if you put down the 8 inch ball representing the sun and take 10 paces, you have the position of Mercury (pinhead). Another 9 paces, Venus (peppercorn). Another 7 paces, Earth. (another peppercorn). This seems incredible but now look.
Another 14 paces, Mars
Another 95 paces, Jupiter
Another 112 paces, Saturn.
Another 249 paces, Uranus.
Another 281 paces, Neptune
Another 242 paces, Pluto.
You have walked more than half a miles from the 8 inch ball representing the sun…1,019 yards.
And this is JUST our Solar System.
It takes 1,000 earths to fit into Jupiter. And, it takes 1,000 Jupiter’s to fit into our Sun (Sol). That would be one million earths to fit into our Sun. And our Sun is a small star.
It would take 700 of our Sun’s in a line to go across the middle of the star Antares. (in the constellation of Scorpio)
What is so amazing to me that in this incredible vastness, our little planet is like a piece of blue dust floating in the void. And on this tiny piece of dust… is mankind. And yet the God who made it all…knows my name.. and desires to have a personal relationship with me. He loves me so much, that if I was the only being on this planet….He still would have come to Earth as a man…lived a sinless life and died on the cross to pay the price for a debt He did not owe…and a debt I could not pay.
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?”
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Posted by journeyman on 2008-02-14 04:34:52 | Rating: | Views: 206
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My wife is a teacher. I am wondering if the school can do a special class for this...as it will have to be done outdoors. This is great.
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Posted by DrSteve
on 2008-04-27 01:35:31
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