We are so Small Options

[Old Man Mike]

This series of pictures show how small our planet Earth is and then how small even our home star (the Sun) is compared to other nearby stars:











And if that is not sobering enough, consider this the next time you look up at the night sky:

There are more stars in our universe than there are grains of sands in all the beaches on earth!


a very small Old Man Mike









This post has been edited by Old Man Mike: 08/16/06 3:33pm

[UNDEAD 1]

mike ,question-how come we can all of a sudden see these new planets,stars etc..? when i first heard they found them they dont look any further than the rest of plantes in our solar system. i find it very interesting and both my wife and i were looking through these picks,very cool.

[Old Man Mike]

mike ,question-how come we can all of a sudden see these new planets,stars etc..? when i first heard they found them they dont look any further than the rest of plantes in our solar system. i find it very interesting and both my wife and i were looking through these picks,very cool.

You are probably referring to the recently discovered Xena. Xena is about twice as far away as Pluto and about 100 times dimmer. Let me leave you with a little perspective about the distances involved with planets and stars:

- If the Earth was the size of a grain of sand, the sun would be about 5 feet away. The planet Pluto would be about 220 feet away and that new Xena planet would be about 500 feet away.

- BUT the "nearby" stars shown in the pictures above would range from 500 to 50,000 miles away.

- AND most of the other stars in the universe would be more than 100 Million times the distance of those "nearby" stars

We are both VERY small and VERY far away from most everything in the universe.

Old Man Mike

[Old Man Mike]

mike ,question-how come we can all of a sudden see these new planets,stars etc..? when i first heard they found them they dont look any further than the rest of plantes in our solar system. i find it very interesting and both my wife and i were looking through these picks,very cool.

You are probably referring to the recently discovered Xena. Xena is about twice as far away as Pluto and about 100 times dimmer. Let me leave you with a little perspective about the distances involved with planets and stars:

- If the Earth was the size of a grain of sand, the sun would be about 5 feet away. The planet Pluto would be about 220 feet away and that new Xena planet would be about 500 feet away.

- BUT the "nearby" stars shown in the pictures above would range from 500 to 50,000 miles away.

- AND most of the other stars in the universe would be more than 100 Million times the distance of those "nearby" stars

We are both VERY small and VERY far away from most everything in the universe.

"I just read last night that theyv ruled out jupiter as a planet,is that true?"

There is no actual scientific definition of planet. That said, all but the far fringe consider Jupiter a planet. Most consider the largest objects that orbit a star as planets.

Old Man Mike