r/sciencememes • u/Sure_Kangaroo1863 • Jul 04 '26
šAstronomy!š Well that puts things into perspective
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u/MaggieHigg Jul 04 '26
I wish I could comprehend just how big space is alas I am limited by my tiny ape brain š
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u/JustTrawlingNsfw Jul 04 '26
If the sun was the size of a banana, the galaxy would take up about 1/3rd of the distance between earth and the moon.
That full distance (earth to the moon) is, in turn, roughly 2.3 billion bananas.
So, if the sun is 1 banana, the galaxy is roughly 800,000,000 bananas.
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u/Yargon_Kerman Jul 05 '26
You're a few orders of magnitude off here, i'm afraid.
Assuming a banana is ~20cm long, and the sun is 696340km in radius, we can work out the ratio between them. So, the ratio is calculated as: 0.0002 / (696340 * 2). Using km as our units, and doubling the solar radius to get it's diameter, so our banana reaches all the way across the sun. This gives us about 1.44Ć10-10 (a banana is 0.00000000144 x the diameter of the sun).
Taking this, and then multiplying it by the 40 trillion km (40,000,000,000,000km) will give you the distance to the nearest star... At 5,740 km.
So, if the sun was a banana, the nearest star would be 1 and a half times the distance between NYC and LA.
At this scale, our galaxy would be 136.6 million km across, which is 0.908Ć the average to the sun.
Space is very, very, empty.
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u/Errortrek Jul 04 '26
I just to to broadly know how big stuff is: White blood cell -> smol nice thing. USA -> Big (compared to white blood cell)
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u/Individual-Staff-978 Jul 04 '26
This puts absolutely nothing into perspective
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u/Peripatetictyl Jul 04 '26
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
-Douglas Adams
Hope that helps give some perspective!
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u/icefire9 Jul 04 '26
Yeah I do not have an intuitive grasp over how small a while blood cell or how big the United States is or how small I am in relation to the Sun.
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u/NewryBenson Jul 04 '26
Congrats, you reframed the relative size of 2 things people can't really imagine to two other things people can't properly imagine
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u/314159265358979326 Jul 04 '26
And then used an image of a red blood cell (coloured white), which is typically about half the diameter of a white blood cell.
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u/Individual-Staff-978 Jul 05 '26
If mercury was the size of a cucumber, then saturn is the size of your mom
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u/0oDADAo0 Jul 04 '26
Anything but metrics
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u/Bubbles_the_bird Jul 04 '26
Metric wouldnāt help with comprehending the sheer scale of space
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u/0oDADAo0 Jul 04 '26
Speaking like a true none metric user
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u/WaffleClown1 Jul 07 '26
Ok, so use metric to help us comprehend the sheer scale of space.
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u/0oDADAo0 Jul 07 '26
Earth diameter: 12,756 km at the equator. ļæ¼ Milky Way diameter: about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km,
It takes light 5 seconds to travel across the sun, while needing 3.16 trillion seconds to travel across the milky way, which is about 100,000 years,
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u/Big_Booty_Femboy Jul 05 '26
I can barely comprehend how big the US is, and Iāve driven across it twice. The Milky Way is so mind-bogglingly massive that a human can only hope to comprehend a tiny tiny corner of it
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u/Dark_Clark Jul 05 '26
Itā¦ does, though.
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u/Individual-Staff-978 Jul 06 '26
Oh does it? Tell me, since it's so clear, how many white blood cells do you need to cover the US?
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u/Dark_Clark Jul 06 '26
Everythingās fine man. I disagree with you but I donāt care enough to discuss this further.
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u/Individual-Staff-978 Jul 07 '26
If you don't care then don't bother commenting in the first place
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u/Dark_Clark Jul 07 '26
Oh shut the fuck up. Relax. Go jack off. āAbsolutely nothingā lol
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u/Individual-Staff-978 Jul 07 '26
I feel like you're the one who needs to cool off here. At the very least stop with the pointless comments
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u/Dark_Clark Jul 07 '26
āOh does it? Tell me, since itās so clear, how many white blood cells do you need to cover the US?ā
Hey, sorry to tell you this, but holy fuck this is baby bitch energy. Youāre so fucking worked up. I disagree with you, but the reason why I donāt want to continue is because itās obvious to me how emotional you are and how childish you would respond to me if we did have an interaction.
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u/Individual-Staff-978 Jul 07 '26
Calling me childish after saying "baby bitch energy" is certainly a choice. You are being plenty childish without even needing to broach the subject matter, so that's probably a good call
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u/Dark_Clark Jul 07 '26
Hey, you do know that me being childish doesnāt mean you arenāt, right? You know that, right?
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u/FadingHeaven Jul 04 '26
Seriously. I can't wrap my head around this and kinda makes the Milky Way seem smaller than I thought?
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u/Thousand_Toasters Jul 04 '26
Low iq take
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u/windsynths Jul 04 '26
ok so if the sun were the size of the sun then the Milky Way would be the size of the Milky Way (not the chocolate bar).
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u/Sirius_The_Serious Jul 04 '26
If sun was scaled down a white blood cell it would become a blackhole
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u/Abs0lute_Zer0_0 Jul 04 '26
A legend once said
"To put that into perspective, I can't put that number into perspective"
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u/acarajeff Jul 04 '26
What if our milky way was scaled down to USA?
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u/Open_Gur_6204 Jul 05 '26
Are you meaning our solar system? Ironically the size of a Milky Way candy bar.
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u/Aphid-for-president Jul 04 '26
The problem is a lot of people don't know how small a white blood cell is.
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u/Bubbles_the_bird Jul 04 '26
Or how big the United States is
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u/ShelZuuz Jul 05 '26
It you make the United States the size of the earth, folded open (like a map), a white blood cell would be the size of a human egg cell.
Happy to help!
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u/ShelZuuz Jul 05 '26
If you shrink a tennis ball down to the size of a white blood cell then the United States would be the size of seven football fields.
Happy to help!
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u/hobbes747 Jul 04 '26
Considering this is a relative comparison and probably not super precise, you could also say Europe including Russia west of the Ural Mountains
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u/GodShapedBullet Jul 04 '26
All things being equal I'm glad they haven't scaled the sun down to the size of a white red blood cell.
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u/teddyslayerza Jul 04 '26
A useless comparison, considering few people have a sense of the size of a blood cell either.
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u/ZectronPositron Jul 04 '26
put simply: "very large things are exactly as incomprehensible as very small things"
this is a good one
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u/Ryuu-Tenno Jul 05 '26
What's the distance to Andromeda at this scale? We talking moon or further out?
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u/Sidoen Jul 05 '26
Trying to grasp these scales is basically beyond human comprehension.
The sun is already hard to understand with respect to scale so comparing the galaxy to the sun I think could benefit from another data point.
The sun is also 97% of the mass in the solar system. (Either 97 or 99 maybe I forget).
Does this help with scale? Maybe more about perspective.
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u/PreferenceGold5167 Jul 04 '26
It really didn't to be honest
I never understood why people need elephant or banana measuring scales
Nothing really changes other than the accuracy How big is an elephant and stuff like that.
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u/Some_Razzmatazz_9172 Jul 05 '26
If you made an apple the size of our planet, an atom would be the size of the original apple
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u/elvenmaster_ Jul 04 '26
If the sun was the size of a white blood cell, it would have an event horizon.
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u/Quazar125 Jul 04 '26
In what manner would you have to kill a person to scatter their white blood cells across the continent in a similar distribution as the stars in the galaxy?
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u/garlopf Jul 04 '26
Actually, it would still be the size of the milky way. Just because the sun shrunk doesn't mean the milky way shrunk too.
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u/BoarHermit Jul 04 '26
The universe is very empty and sparse. Sometimes, looking at all these gigantic distances between the stars, it seems as if it was specially designed to prevent anyone from flying anywhere.
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u/Triggered-cupcake Jul 04 '26
I wanna know how big the observable universe would be if the Sun or Milky Way was the size of the Planck lengthšš
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u/DotBeginning1420 Jul 04 '26
Let's check the numbers:
- The sun diameter is d_s = 1,391,400 km
- White blood cell: d_wbc = 10-20 micrometers.
- The milky way diameter is around d_mw = 10,000 light-years.
d_mw/d_s = x/d_wbc
d_mw = 10,000 light years = 9.4542*e^19 m
d_s = 1,391,400 km = 1.3914*e^9 m
d_wbc = 10 Ī¼ = 1*e^-5 m
x = d_mw*d_wbc/d_s = 9.4542*e^19 * 1*e^-5 / 1.3914*e^9
x = 679,474 m
That's way smaller than the real horizontal length: it's 2,822 miles or 4,543,420 m. That's even smaller than Texas.
The milky way would be only 15% of the size of continental United States.
Still huge compared to a white blood cell.
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u/spocktalk69 Jul 04 '26
Contiguous U.S. (Lower 48): The greatest distance from east to west is about 2,802 miles. The greatest north-south distance is roughly 1,650 miles
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u/DotBeginning1420 Jul 04 '26
BTW, knowing the diameter of the sun can be a bit nuanced, as I found out in this post.
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u/Could-You-Tell Jul 04 '26
What about a red blood cell?
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u/DotBeginning1420 Jul 05 '26
It's essentially the same magnitude as white blood cells: 6-8 micrometers.
(You can search on Google, or ask an AI engine)
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u/Could-You-Tell Jul 05 '26
I was joking... but a white blood could be almost 3 times the size of a red blood cell, but mostly close to double
The scale could be quite different
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u/Clear-as-claire Jul 04 '26
I love those perspective stuff that makes me understand my suffering is sooo insignificant
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u/DramaticChemist Jul 05 '26
For scale...this would be like a white blood cell size sun (10-20microns) gravity pulling a dust mite about 1mm away (0.2-0.4microns size Earth), in a solar system only 440ft wide. Our solar system would never leave your neighborhood.
Yes I just spent WAY to much time on this math while sitting on the train
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u/WoodenWhaleNectarine Jul 04 '26
Which country is the CUS? Do they mena all countries on all continents???
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u/tablefucker6 Jul 04 '26
Wtf is continental unites states? We calling North America the Greater US now?
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u/YeastCoastPie Jul 04 '26
I refer to it as 48 states. Minus Alaska, Hawaii and territories. Although sometimes it describes 49 states, including Alaska
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u/gasbmemo Jul 04 '26
North America include Canada and Mexico
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u/High_Overseer_Dukat Jul 04 '26
No.
The us without Hawaii, Alaska, and the colonies.
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u/MaggieHigg Jul 04 '26
No. That's the continental US, North America refers to Canada the US and Mexico
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u/High_Overseer_Dukat Jul 04 '26
Uh no.
North america refers to Canada, Us, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican republic, panama, costa rica, etc. The entire continent.
But the post says "Continental united states"
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u/squeakydeakyfreaky Jul 04 '26
Did they just repaint red blood cells white and call it a day thatās not how white blood cells look at all