Astronomy tidbits
February 10th, 2009 Josephine Posted in Announcements | 1 Comment »
A sense of scale:
If the sun were the size of a volleyball and the Earth the size of a pea, they would be approximately 71 feet apart.
If our solar system were the size of a CD, then the Milky Way Galaxy would be the size of the Earth.
If the sun were the size of a golf ball in New York the next nearest star would be a golf ball in Chicago.
The Sun would hold approximately 1 million Earths.
There are 200 billion “Suns” in a galaxy like our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Astronomers can see billions of galaxies.
A sense of time:
If we compress the time since the beginning of the universe (13.5 billions years ago) into one year, and make the beginning January 1, then:
The Earth was formed in mid-September.
The mammals appeared in late December.
All human prehistory (from the first known stone tools) and history have occurred in the last hour of New Year’s Eve.
A sense of energy
At 40 MPH, car consumes about 10,000 watts of power
Hydrogen Bomb releases 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts
Sun steadily emits 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts, the power of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 cars
February 11th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Welcome Josephine – this is a class I really will take in the future!