Scale Model Solar System Drive

This video was shot by two of my students, Mike Johnson and Ryan Lucido, for a project in last year's astronomy class. It uses the scale 1 AU = 93 million miles = 1 foot. First you see the solar system to scale, then they set off on a car trip in accelerated time to show how far the nearest star would be. This really drives home how far 4 light years is compared to the solar system.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• astronomy
• solar
• system
• scale
• model
• educational

[JeffAdkins]

Not bad, 493 views.  3 astronomical societies have seen it and loved it.

[united12]

i made this:-)

[JeffAdkins]

Which one are you?

[Steveman27]

@TheLucidor it's not the car that's the concern, the concern is was it the mileage driven or how far you actually drove. you didn't drive in a straight line, you went through streets and turns, so you didn't travel as far as you would have had it been a straight line, so was it the mileage or the actual distance away?

[Roxaefiction]

This makes me way too happy. I love the idea of doing something like this.

[Unrealistix]

@FountainDew85 For the most part we can't. Which might explain why so many of us think its a total waste of time and money.

Scientists who engage in these SETI projects are either desperate or can't hack it in the real world looking for real grants to do real work if you ask me.

Even if we found an alien message so what? the civilization is probably long dead... it doesn't give any real answers to anyone except perhaps biologists!

Plus it'd only serve to piss off the religious nuts even more.

[Steveman27]

@TheLucidor no, i'll believe you on the distance. what would be REALLY COOOL, would be if you had a video showing the star getting bigger and bigger as you approach it over that same period of time, like in the video, whether it's the fast forwarded time you drove or in the real time you drove. if i could watch a video of that, that'd really be cool.

[TheLucidor]

@Steveman27 I assume so but I can't check I sold the car 3 years ago :-(

@mumblingmickey we brought the ball along.

[Steveman27]

@JeffAdkins Yet you were going TONS faster than the speed of light, yet it took you A VERY LONG TIME to get there. Damn that's far. I can only imagine how much closer and brighter the nearest star would look after one full light year. so, then, counting all driving as strictly linear motion, not counting curves on getting there, is that odemeter distance 100% accurate?

[bedfordcrusader]

nearest start????? you mean star surely

[MumblingMickey]

CONT. 3.

However if light is taking longer to traverse the same distance then obviously time and space are in fact related.. They are spacetime...

Spacetime is a measurement of the space and thus how time is affected within it from the point of view of an observer outside it, compared to that on and observer inside it!

Applications of this include GPS satellites which compensate for the dent made by the earth in spacetime when the satellite (being less massive) does not create such a dent.

[MumblingMickey]

CONT. 2.

Now what was explained and demonstrated using relativity was that since the dent actually stretches space.... then it now takes longer for things to traverse the well. All matter, all energy now takes longer to go around or past the gravity well.

If something is truly massive. like a quasar... then light traverses it, and is bent as it passes the well. This is referred to as a gravity lens.

It explains how we can see objects directly behind some stars.

[MumblingMickey]

CONT. However lets give that explanation a go.

All matter in the universe takes up space. An object in space (say a planet) not only takes up the volume of space it contains...but it also bends that space in three dimensions, a little like a steel ball on a rubber mat.

The heavier (more massive) an object is. the bigger the dent it makes in space. An object close to that 'dent' is attracted to it. We call that property 'gravity' and the dent is called a 'well'

This is classical physics.