APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany
Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
Markus Schwarz wrote:Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany
Try this one on youtube. It's the same video.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
The University of Maine has done something like this. The sun is represented as an arc in a three story stairwell in the Science building on the Presque Isle campus. The rest of the planets are strung out along US Highway One down to near Houlton. The scale and the planets are to scale. Most of them can be seen along the highway, though one has to know where to look and to pay attention.
Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
A model must be different from the thing it represents, else it would be the thing itself, not a model of it. Max Tegmark thinks the universe is made of math, but I'm not so sure.Chris Peterson wrote:Or perhaps, it is a mistake to believe there's a difference between the two.Visual_Astronomer wrote:Precisely. GR provides a very accurate description of the behavior of matter, but it is a mistake to confuse reality with a mathematical model of it. I have no fear of philosophy!
Newton had a good model, but it got replaced by Einstein. Relativity and quantum physics do a really good job describing particular narrow slices of reality, but they aren't unified, and they don't include all the dark matter and energy. Surely some day they will be swept aside by an even more precise, all-inclusive model of the world.
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
My point was simply that if the model perfectly represents the behavior, then there is little meaning to what the behavior "really" is. All we need is the model. When discussing the Universe, "reality" isn't a useful concept, assuming it even has meaning at all.Visual_Astronomer wrote:A model must be different from the thing it represents, else it would be the thing itself, not a model of it.Chris Peterson wrote:Or perhaps, it is a mistake to believe there's a difference between the two.Visual_Astronomer wrote:Precisely. GR provides a very accurate description of the behavior of matter, but it is a mistake to confuse reality with a mathematical model of it. I have no fear of philosophy!
We have few perfect models at this point, but that's a separate issue.
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it. What model would you say is perfect already, Chris?
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
I don't know if any are (although some might be). But I don't know why a model can't perfectly represent reality. I don't see that it's something that can never be achieved.geckzilla wrote:I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it. What model would you say is perfect already, Chris?
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
geckzilla wrote:
I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it.
What model would you say is perfect already...
- 1) The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant.
2) E=mc2
3) Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
4) The four laws of thermodynamics.
5) Maxwell's equations
6)
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
I like this one too though not quite the same type of equation.neufer wrote:geckzilla wrote:
I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it.
What model would you say is perfect already...
- 1) The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant.
2) E=mc2
3) Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
4) The four laws of thermodynamics.
5) Maxwell's equations
6)
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
bystander wrote:Try this one on youtube. It's the same video.Markus Schwarz wrote:Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany
There is no technical problem but a legal issue, which is a lot more difficult to resolve
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
Just use a proxy. These things are easily worked around.Markus Schwarz wrote:bystander wrote:Try this one on youtube. It's the same video.Markus Schwarz wrote:Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany :(
There is no technical problem but a legal issue, which is a lot more difficult to resolve :bang:
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
Haha, it's just way too easy to make jokes of poor taste involving (fire)walls and overbearing copyright groups in Germany...
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.
Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
There is also a scale model at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, with the Sun in front of the museum, and marker posts down the street toward the Washington Monument.
Question: With the Sun in the Black Rock Desert on the scale you constructed, about how far away is the nearest star? Denver? St. Louis? etc.
Thanks!
Question: With the Sun in the Black Rock Desert on the scale you constructed, about how far away is the nearest star? Denver? St. Louis? etc.
Thanks!
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
~47,000 kilometers or about 30% further than geostationary satellites.mwarri wrote:
Question: With the Sun in the Black Rock Desert on the scale you constructed, about how far away is the nearest star? Denver? St. Louis? etc.
Art Neuendorffer
Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
Heck, that's even a lot of miles!
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Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
And yet a banana slug could traverse that distance in ~600 years = ~150 life spans.ta152h0 wrote:that is a lot of kilometersneufer wrote:~47,000 kilometers or about 30% further than geostationary satellites.mwarri wrote:
Question: With the Sun in the Black Rock Desert on the scale you constructed, about how far away is the nearest star? Denver? St. Louis? etc.
It would take humans ~30,000 years = ~400 life spans to get to Proxima Centauri.
"Interstellar travel" for banana slugs makes more sense, IMO.
Art Neuendorffer
Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
lets see, one spaceship pulling an Airstream trailer for supplies, having babies on the way with all the claptrap required to raise such babies to be doctors, scientists, engineers going thru 150 lifespans being bombarded by intense radiation and quite possibly never to return info to Earthdwellers. I think having an ice cold on here is a better scenario .
Wolf Kotenberg
Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
Nice to hear about the permanent models constructed in Alaska and Maine. It would be fun to visit these and see them.
Mark Goldfain
Re: APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)
This is a wonderful project that truly educates concerning the sheer size of space, however, I have to take issue with the statement about floating in nothing. Dark matter, gravitational fields, cosmic rays, supernovas, galaxies, the universe. Truly not nothing.