r/nextfuckinglevel • u/iloveyouthorodinson • 1d ago
On a dry lakebed in Nevada, a group of friends build the first scale model of the Solar System with complete planetary orbits: a true illustration of our place in the Universe.
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u/SpinChargeSeparation 1d ago
First? It's not the first, not by a long shot. Look at this, for example.
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u/lovejanetjade 1d ago
And they included Pluto.
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u/apdmapdm 20h ago
IStandWithPluto
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u/schmerg-uk 18h ago
And Sedna and a few other Trans-Neptunian objects and some notable asteroids too
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u/WanderEir 8h ago
I love Pluto, but they could not have used it here-Pluto's orbit isn't flat to the sun like the rest of the 8, it's 17.1 degrees off the plane AND it's elliptical, cutting into and out of Neptune's orbit. They would have had to dig an INSANE trench and built literal ramparts opposite the trench to reflect that one orbit here.
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u/craigiest 1d ago
That does not include the orbits, much less the planets moving.
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u/NICEnEVILmike 9h ago
Season 5, episode 1. Starting at the 7:00 minute mark. Drones used to show the orbits of all the planets to scale with one Earth year taking 30 seconds to complete an orbit. The episode is actually about trying to find "planet 9", which, in the scale used, is estimated to be about the size of a BB roughly 18 miles from the sun.
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u/craigiest 6h ago
season 5 episode 1 of what? I'm thinking the difference is that the orbits might be to scale, but the drones aren't going to be the size of the planets on the same scale. That's the unique thing about this (and the swedish and smaller smithsonian models): the sizes and distances are on the same scale.
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u/NICEnEVILmike 6h ago
How the Universe Works
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u/craigiest 6h ago
Interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOOGYQVlSHI&list=PL39_ud5aKSvkl_wj5BIkRvANCiiUPL3VS&index=93
They say that each of the inner planets would be smaller than a peppercorn, which obviously you wouldn't be able to see from above, but don't bother to show them at that scale.
Then they bring out the drones, which are obviously bigger than a peppercorn. But when they actually show the drones orbiting, they use giant CGI drone icons, probably because once they had the footage, they realized their drone idea didn't work. The drones weren't really big enough to see easily on a tv.
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u/WanderEir 8h ago
..It's the first where everything AND the orbits can be seen at the same time from a single human perspective.
Yes, there absolutely are larger scale models of the solar system on earth, but you basically can't see the whole thing at once for any of them.
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u/Fun_Muscle9399 1d ago
Fuck you, Pluto haters! Neptune isn’t the edge.
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u/-TreeBeard 1d ago
As soon as he said the edge, I was all " you better fucking include pluto in this scale" , they didnt. 2/10
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u/craigiest 1d ago
If you’re demanding they include Pluto, why aren’t you demanding they include dwarf planets like Eris, which is larger than Pluto?
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u/-TreeBeard 1d ago
Because I didn't grow up with 9 planets in our system only to be told later on in life that they were revoking my boys planethood. ERIS WHO?
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u/craigiest 1d ago
Well they reclasssufied it because to be consistent they would have had to add half a dozen newly discovered planets of equal stature to Pluto knowing that with time they will probably discover dozens or hundreds more worlds just as deserving of planet status as Pluto. It’s scientific classification, not a popularity contest.
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u/Fun_Muscle9399 1d ago
But Jupiter is allowed to have 115 moons? I’m not buying the “too many” argument.
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u/craigiest 23h ago
Well then please add Ceres (also formerly considered a “real” planet), Eris, Haumea, Sedna, Makemake, Quaoar, Orcus, and Gonggong to your memorized list of planets. It’s not just the number, it’s that if a line is going to be drawn anywhere that is based on something real, not just arbitrary, the only places to do so either exclude Pluto or will include thousands of not-yet-discovered icy objects that nobody thinks belong in the same category as the big 8. When I was a kid, i was taught that Pluto was probably bigger than Mercury. In fact it’s about 1/6 the volume and 1/25 the mass. It’s the same thing that happened with Asteroids in the asteroid belt. Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas were added to the list of planets when they were discovered, but got demoted. Ceres is every bit as deserving of planet status as Pluto.
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u/-TreeBeard 22h ago
I'm not opposed to adding more "planets" to our solar system as we discover them, and it is absolutely a popularity contest, Pluto's got my vote. That's all I'm sayin :]
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u/Bwanabud 1d ago
Pluto catching strays.
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u/craigiest 1d ago
Funny because the reason Pluto isn’t a planet is that it didn’t catch the stray stuff in its orbit.
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u/gbelly123 1d ago
I think the interesting thing about these demonstrations is it really puts into perspective the distances and size of plants relative to the Sun. Basically we are little pebbles way far away orbiting a huge ball of fire.
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u/RebekkaKat1990 1d ago
Another way of thinking about the scale of the universe: you can fit 63 planet Earths inside Uranus.
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u/the_peckham_pouncer 7h ago
And if you scale down the solar system to the size of a quarter then our galaxy is the size of North America
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u/ceadagamdulamach 1d ago
On this scale, Pluto is between 5.5 and 9 km due to its elliptical orbit.
Voyager 1 would now be about 32 km away.
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u/BootHeadToo 1d ago
Downtown Ithaca NY has had one for decades though as part of a “science walk”. Good jobs though, boys.
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u/craigiest 1d ago
Do the planets move in their orbits?
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u/BootHeadToo 20h ago
Oh, didn’t realize these ones actually move in their orbits. Thought that was just an animation. The ones in Ithaca are stationary, just little statues placed at distances to scale from the sun throughout downtown. I think Carl Sagan has something to do with it.
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u/phoenixs13 1d ago
So on this scale, how close would the nearest star be?
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u/ceadagamdulamach 1d ago
Proxima Centauri, would be about 50,000 km away.... Earth isnt big enough to fit it in this scale... they'd have to go all the way around and around again another quarter.
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u/OddTaku9424 1d ago
Fuck off. And of course this isn’t meant for you in any way whatsoever. It’s just my reaction everytime I try and understand how big space is…. That’s insane
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u/heinebold 23h ago
Out science teacher back in the day illustrated that vastness neatly with nothing but a penny. He simply put the coin in a corner of the big science room desk. Then he told us if that's the Sun, to scale, then Earth is a pinhead in the opposite corner. And the nearest star, the next coin, is in a city halfway across our country.
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u/gijoe50000 1d ago
Or like 1/7th the distance to the moon, a bit past the geosynchronous orbiting satellites..
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u/SuperSaiyanTupac 1d ago
The planets dont go around in a flat circle tho.
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u/ceadagamdulamach 1d ago
They are on the same plane
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u/SuperSaiyanTupac 1d ago
But the sun moves. The circle ain’t flat
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u/nicuramar 1d ago
Whether something moves depends on your frame of reference. In a solar system model, you’d usually center that on the sun.
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u/Mr_Goonman 1d ago
Yeah I had on mute but it looked the orbit paths were drawn as perfect concentric circles
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u/DasArchitect 1d ago
All circles are flat, they just took some creative license as to their individual orientations
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u/BilliamClimptonIII 1d ago
Wonder if they could repeat it, but use drones as the planets? Or would that be out of the Range of non-military drones?
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u/Public-Eagle6992 1d ago
From when is that video? Because a town near me also has a scale model which seems older than this
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u/RandomName39483 1d ago
Several cities have scale models. The one in Anchorage is roughly the same scale as this model.
This model, though, has complete orbits that they’ve marked in the desert.
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u/Scotty-Raspberry-36 1d ago
I did this with my daughter when she was younger. Well it didn't have full orbits, and the scale was half this. But we did make scale models of the sun and planets and put them in the right locations. It was a great exercise for developing an appreciation of the scale of the solar system. The sun and rocky planets fit in my mum and dads garden but we had to drive right across the valley for the outer planets
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u/Turpentine_Tree 1d ago
There is one in Zagreb, capitol of Croatia since 2004.
https://www.lovezagreb.hr/topics/neighbors-guide/grounded-solar-system-of-zagreb
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u/brokeneckblues 1d ago
I really wanted to do a project based on the scale of the solar system in art school but it was just logistically too difficult at the time for me. Seeing this makes me really happy
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u/No_Frost_Giants 1d ago
When I was a hs teacher we had astronomy class and one of the lessons was pick your fav planet and to scale make a made, the sun was a 2 meter sphere. Then off to parking lot to do scale distances. Usually someone pointed out how many km they would need to be to start with Saturn etc . So we divided by 100 for distance and it was still ridiculed how far out the outer planets were .
This is a great video
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u/alehanjro2017 1d ago
Flat earthers be like- "Not only is the Earth flat but the solar system is flat too!"
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u/OtherCommission8227 1d ago
This is not the first. I read a book written in the 1930s about how to do a mile walk that simulates a scale model of the solar system w/ household objects. It was really neat.
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u/mekwall 1d ago
If you've ever wondered how it would be like travelling from the Sun to Jupiter at the speed of light: https://youtu.be/1AAU_btBN7s
Space is huge.
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u/manrata 1d ago
Obligatory if the Moon was only 1 pixel, accurate size map of the solar system: https://www.joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
Scroll right…. For a shit ton of time, or let light speed do it automatically, icon at the bottom. Spoiler light speed is sloooow.
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u/Public-Platypus2995 1d ago
Then there’s the whole “all of the planets fit between Earth and the Moon”. For some scale of how truly small the planets are compared to their orbits.
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u/Murky_Examination144 1d ago
The scale of space, interplanetary space is just mind boggling. You have seen this scale. Now imagine reducing the size of the Sun to a grain of sand and try to visualize the Earth, us, at that scale.
If the Sun is a grain of sand, Alpha Centauri (at 4.25 light years) would be another grain of sand one mile away!!!
So when they say they find a possible habitable planet 60 ly away, at this scale, is another grain of sand 15 miles away.
Mind boggling and depressing as well.
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u/30yearCurse 1d ago
Should include Pluto... as the beginning of the Ort cloud. then drive a 1 light day and put Vger...
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u/BestDamnMomEver 22h ago
I have this scale on the wall in my kids room. And on the other wall we have size comparison with only a quarter of the sun. It was too big to make it full size on a wall and still have a reasonable size of Earth.
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u/moosenugget7 20h ago
Very cool video, but as others have mentioned, that’s not even close to the full solar system.
At the very least, we should be including the Kuiper Belt, a region of scattered icy objects that spreads out to almost twice the distance of Neptune’s orbit - 55 astronomical units (AU) vs the 30 AU of Neptune. Everyone’s favorite demoted planet Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt.
Beyond that, the heliopause at about 120 AU (that’s 4x Neptune’s average distance from the sun) is a commonly used scientific benchmark for the “edge” of the solar system. It’s where the solar wind (charged particles from the Sun) gets blocked and pushed back by the interstellar wind (charged particles from everything else in the cosmos).
Finally, if you want to get really crazy, there’s the Oort Cloud, a theoretical spherical shell of trillions of icy objects all within the Sun’s gravitational influence. The closest estimate of its inner edge is 1000 AU (so 233 miles in diameter based on the original 7 miles for the orbit of Neptune in the video). And the outer edge stretches to more than 100,000 AU, at which point the Sun’s gravity is about equal to that of the Alpha Centauri star system. So on the scale of that model, the outer edge of the Oort Cloud should extend out to the Moon!
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u/THEBADW0LFE 17h ago
This was beautiful and is a great representation of scale. Glad these unemployed people did something productive with their time instead of just beat kids at Fortnite.
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u/xpietoe42 9h ago
Whats amazing when you see this scale and think of how far Voyager 1 is!!! Its insane with its 36kb (or something) memory and still communicating with us!
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u/MarkontheWeekends 1d ago
Just gonna stop saying the planet names at Uranus huh... I'm joking but honestly I wonder if it affects the algorithm if he does say it
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u/Numerous-Soil-2800 1d ago
I mean an aerial view of that shit would’ve been nice.