Talk:Solar System model

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Astronomy: Solar System Unassessed

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Baltimore & Annapolis Trail Planet Walk is another potential addition. http://www.americantrails.org/resources/art/planetwalk.html http://www.friendsofaatrails.org/planet_walk.htm 108.15.40.121 (talk) 11:14, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Astrology

I've attempted to clean up the article. Please indicate any further concerns. --agr 19:24, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The part at the end that starts sermonizing about astrology is inappropriate. I'll snip it out myself if no one objects. Thedoorhinge 23:59, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The concept that the section attempts to explain is very valid, and should be retained. The text is, however, very poorly written and should be completely rethought. There is text on the Solar Sytem page that could be incorporated here. --Ckatz^chat_spy 04:23, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Even if the concept is valid, it presents an opinion- that astrology flourishes on misconceptions. That isn't for Wikipedia to take a stance on. I'll remove it, if someone wants to find a source of someone significant saying it and put it back as "according to X, misconceptions like this are what allow astrology to flourish" then go ahead.Thedoorhinge 14:34, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry... I was referring to the part about the scale of the Solar System, not the astrology... delete away! --Ckatz^chat_spy 18:50, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mental Model

What is the best simple mental model of the solar system?

If the goal is a rough mental model of the planet spacing, there are two sets of planets:

The Inner Planets
Mercury Venus Earth Mars
0.4  0.7  1.0  1.5
  
The Outer Planets
Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune (Pluto)
5  10  19  30  39

Each set is spaced quite evenly. The inner planets are spaced at about 0.3 astronomical units. The outer planets are spaced at about 10 AU. The key mental concept is that the four inner planets are closely spaced, and the outer planets are spaced about 30 times farther apart.

What is the best simple mental model of the planet sizes?

Mercury, Venus and Mars are "a little smaller" than Earth (0.4 to .95 diameter). Jupiter and Saturn are "about ten times" (11 and 9 times dia). Uranus and Neptune are 4 times bigger. Pluto is one-fifth dia. (The difference in masses is greater than the difference in diameters.) The Sun is 100 times the dia of Earth. The distance from the Earth to the Sun is about 100 times the dia of the Sun. The solar system is almost all empty space -- the sun is small compared to the distances between, and everything else is extremely small. -69.87.203.252 12:35, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A few days ago I posted my best effort to present a model that is easy to mentally grasp at a human scale. Imagine going to a football field with a golf ball and four BB pellets. Place the golf ball at one goal line, then run all the way to the other end to place one of the BB pellets at the other goal line. Along the way you dropped the other BB pellets - one at the 17 yard line, one at the 30 yard line, and one 63 yards beyond the golf ball.

Ok, so if you scale the distance from the Sun to the farthest planet, Neptune, down to that 100 yards, that's a close approximation to what you'd have. The golf ball would actually be larger than the Sun (the Sun would be two-thirds the diameter of the golf ball). And the four BB pellets are larger than each of the Gas Giants. Saturns rings, however, would extend wider than the BB.

So that's how vastly empty the Solar System is. The five largest bodies all scale to smaller than scattering a golf ball and four BBs down the entire distance of a football field! (And keep in mind that the distance across the entire orbit of Neptune would be double this.)

The terrestrial planets and the dwarf planets scale down to the size of fleas and flea eggs! That's on this same football field. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are all found at the 5 yard line and closer. The yard line sequence for those planets is: 1, 2, 3, 5. Along with those, Ceres and Jupiter all are in the Red Zone, at 9 and 17 yards.

The full sequence of distances from the Sun to Neptune is:

0, 1, 2, 3, 5, (9), 17, 30, 63, 100.

Pluto and the outer dwarf planets scale to:

(130), (143), (152), (225).

This full detailed graphic of this description has been posted to the article, with pointers toward the dwarf planets past Neptune's goal line as they'd be found off the image to the right. A simplified diagram, showing only the golf ball and four BBs is here:

File:Solar System scaled to football field.png

I hope this is as helpful to others as it has been for me. As soon as you become aware of how vast the actual spacing is, then you can see how badly distorted all the images and orreries we've grown up with are. If you're able to walk a full-scale model, that can help to convey the accurate vastness of the Solar System, but these are typically so large that by the time you reach the outer planets, you've forgotten how far you've travelled to get there. At least, that's been my experience. It's hard to take it all in at once. When reduced to the scale of a football field, everything stays within an immediately graspable human scale. A person can be sitting at a football stadium, see both goal lines, and be holding a golf ball in one hand, four BB's in the other hand, and simultaneously get bitten by a flea because they brought their dog to enjoy the game too. Ha!--Tdadamemd (talk) 07:22, 11 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Today I uploaded a photograph-version of the Solar System scaled to a football field. This could be a good one to incorporate into this article, or even the main Solar System article. The main article still falls short in communicating the vast distances between the planets.--Tdadamemd (talk) 08:57, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, for the time being, I've just added a text-link to the caption of the original football field image. If a consensus sees the new image to be a better one to present in this article as primary, then they can be swapped out.--Tdadamemd (talk) 04:06, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Badly chosen sites

Calais, Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, and Rotterdam are not in the UK, and should be changed to sites more or less north of London; Pluto could be in Snowdonia. There is in fact no need to use the UK; whole Pluto could be in the Middlesbrough region, more or less. Or, with the centre near Preston, it may be possible to have at least one body in each of the four constituent parts of the UK - England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. 82.163.24.100 (talk) 11:56, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ratio sorting

Is there any way to get MediaWiki to sort columns containing ratios correctly, aside from making the entire column header “1:” and filling the values with the second half of the ratio? El Mariachi (talk) 18:22, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]