Did you ever build one of those scale models of the solar system as a kid? You know, where you walk around a football field setting down balls of different sizes, attempting to gain some understanding of our place in the cosmos?
Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh decided to drive out to the Nevada desert and create a to-scale model of the solar system, showing the true relative distance of each planet from one another and their relative sizes. To make a model using an Earth the size of a small marble, they needed over seven miles of empty space.
The process is fascinating. After placing Saturn, the friends turn back to the model of the sun -- about a mile away -- and remark upon how tiny and distant it looks.
And the results are incredible.
How tiny do you feel right now?
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