Donate SIGN UP

stars

Avatar Image
fatalbert | 10:45 Sat 24th Mar 2007 | Science
11 Answers
Hi everyone,am new here,what a fantastic site,the answer to another topic prompted me to ask the following question. If the planet Earth was the size of a pea,how far would the nearest star be.I look forward to any answers.
Gravatar

Answers

1 to 11 of 11rss feed

Best Answer

No best answer has yet been selected by fatalbert. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.

For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.
Alpha Centauri is the nearest star, and is approximately the same size as the sun.
If the Earth was the size of a pea, the sun would be the size of a basketball, and so would Alpha Centauri, But on this scale it would be 8000 km away!
The Sun is the nearest star and would be about 152 feet away if earth were pea-sized.
You need to specify the size of your pea else the figures for distance will vary widely.

If your "average" pea has a diameter of around 10 mm then for ease of calculation I will take the range of size as 8.5 mm to 12.75 mm. (8.5 being of 12.75)

Thus:
Pea = 12.75 x10^-3 m (12.75 mm)
Earth = 12.75 x10^6 m
Scale = 1 : 1 x10^9

Distance Sun ~ 150 x10^9 m (93.2 million miles)
Scaled Sun distance ~ 150 m

Distance Proxima Centauri ~ 4 x10^16 m (4.22 light years)
Scaled P.Cent. dist. ~ 4 x10^7 m (40,000 km)

and

Pea = 8.5 mm
Scaled Sun distance ~ 100 m
Scaled P.Cent. dist. ~ 2.67 x10^7 m (26,700 km)
It would still be the same distance away, but the people living on the Pea would be very tiny.
if the earth was the size of a pea, how big would peas be ?
Peas stop! I'm so cornfused�
theleeroy55... about 10 picometres, 0.1 �ngstr�m or one third of the diameter of a Helium atom.
You think that's somethin?

If you shrunk the earth to that scale the observable Universe would be scaled to a size something like 20 times real the distance to alpha centauri.

I'm also very disappointed that you all ignored proxima centauri (the real closest star - other than the sun of course) presumably just because it's not visible to the naked eye.

I fully expect a interstellar dipomatic incident to ensue
Ahem... who ignored Proxima Centauri?
Apologies I mis-read your P for an A at the bottom after Heathfield's post!

Interstellar war averted!
. . . Whew! ! ! Close one.

Peas be with you, Earthlings

1 to 11 of 11rss feed

Do you know the answer?

stars

Answer Question >>