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Space Science

Worlds Largest Scale Model Solar System? 198

Posted by timothy from the not-polite-to-add-your-own-planets dept.
Richard_at_work writes "As the BBC is reporting, the UK is to attempt to create the worlds largest scale model of the solar system ever attempted. At a scale of 1:15million, this brings the distance between the Sun (positioned in Cheshire at the Jodrell Bank Telescope site) and the Earth to 15km or 10 miles, although you will need to travel the entire length of the UK to visit all of the planets. Interesting to note is the distinct lack of a 10th planet :) As well as the 9 planets and the sun, also shown on the model will be Halleys Comet and several asteroids. Would have been great if they had included probes such as Voyager 1." Maybe this claimant for world's largest solar system model will have to expand to keep up.
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Worlds Largest Scale Model Solar System? More

Worlds Largest Scale Model Solar System?

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  • This is a fantastic idea for a realistic idea of how great the distances are from planet to planet, and from earth to the sun, but that is about the only thing I can see this being used for. I see this as an over-rated tourist attraction more than anything.

    • Re:Great for distance comparison, but thats it! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by n0mad6 ( 668307 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @01:46PM (#8621850)
      I agree, but in that sense, having a model that really gives you the sense of scale that the solar system is provides for a great educational tool. Hearing the number 93 million miles (150 million km) doesn't really instill a sense of scale since we on Earth don't really have things we can relate that kind of distance to.

      Of course, on the scale of this model, the closest star (other than the Sun) to us, Proxima Centurai, would be located four times the distance to the Moon.

    • If at each stop they have a giant plaque of facts about the planet (or comet or whatever) you're looking at, then it would be at least educational. Stuff like mean distance from the sun, how long a "year" is on that planet, average temperature, weather, etc.

      But now the US needs to get in on the act... we have a wide country, we probably could do this. Or even do it diagonally , arranging it so Pluto is in Alaska ;-)

    • In Washington DC (Score:4, Informative)

      by way2trivial ( 601132 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @01:51PM (#8621883) Homepage Journal
      they have one along the smithsonian museums
      it's the length of the mall, each one has a to scale model of the astral body, and a indicator how many feet to the left or right you must go to the next body.. it's very unreal to realize that if the eart were the size of 'this dot' then the sun is 5 blocks thattaway..
      • "they have one along the smithsonian museums, it's the length of the mall"

        They have one in Sweden, it's the length of the country:

        "The Sweden Solar System is the world's largest model of our planetary system, at a scale of 1:20 million. The Sun is represented by the Globe arena in Stockholm, the largest spherical building in the world. The planets are placed and sized according to scale with the inner planets being in Stockholm and Jupiter (diameter 7.3 m) at the International airport Arlanda. The oute

    • Yeah, but the planets, last time I checked, move around. It would be cool if the model did this too. It would be funny to have mini planets following their orbits on ground in UK.
    • Actually, its supposed to be mainly an educational attraction more than anything, since the majority of the models will be placed within school grounds, or at museums. Of course, it will still be touted as a tourist attraction, but thats one hell of a bus ride from one model to another.
    • Except for a slew of one-liners about minivans circling Uranus, this doesn't sound productive of anything remotely useful.

      Computer simulations are now commonplace, and seem like a much more efficent conceptual instigator. If you haven't already seen it, check out this (slightly) related web site: PowersOf10 [fsu.edu]

    • Hopefully they'll add road signs on the freeways

      Pluto
      400,000,000 miles
    • I see this as an over-rated tourist attraction more than anything.

      Unfortunately so. Its really quite amazing the amount of misinformation the average person knows about outside of the land we stand on. Ask a few people around the office the following questions:

      1) What is between the planets?
      In my experience when asking college educated people, at least 25%+ answer stars.
      2) Why is the sky blue?
      IME, 50% say its because it reflects from the ocean (even though we were in MN)
      3) Why is the sunset red?
      IME,

      • 1) What is between the planets? In my experience when asking college educated people, at least 25%+ answer stars.

        Well, that could be a correct answer. If the universe is closed (e.g., like the "surface of a sphere" analogy), you could take a direct route in which there'd be many stars between planets in our solar system.

    • Agreed. This seems like something more appropriate for the American Highway system, to accompany the largest ball of twine and the dinosaur replicas.

      Either way, wake me up when they turn it into a real-time replica, where the celestial bodies move.
      • "This seems like something more appropriate for the American Highway system"

        The biggest scale model you could build in the USA would be about 2600km across, making it about 1:1E+6 scale. But to do that, you'd need a scale model of the sun that's 1300 metres in diameter.

        Thinking about the technology that the USA has, you could probably make a glowing ball of fire that's 1.3km across, but I'd rather you didn't...
    • Ah, well, it's all a matter of proportion. You see, if the Sun were the size of a basketball, Uranus would be 50 feet away. Which would make wiping quite difficult.
    • This is a fantastic idea for a realistic idea of how great the distances are from planet to planet, and from earth to the sun, but that is about the only thing I can see this being used for. I see this as an over-rated tourist attraction more than anything.

      Of course it is. That's probably the intention too. It remains to be seen if it's overrated, but of course it wasn't made for scientific purposes. :-P

  • 1:15 million? Feh (Score:5, Funny)

    by bluestar ( 17362 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @01:44PM (#8621829) Homepage
    I just finished building a full scale model. I centered it on the sun instead of England though. It took a long time to position Sedna, which is why you're only recently seeing it in the news.

  • Field trip (Score:2, Funny)

    by dulles ( 86837 )
    Best 3rd grade field trip ever!
  • Will they use slinkies to emulate a wormhole?

  • Pluto (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @01:50PM (#8621870) Homepage
    "Interesting to note is the distinct lack of a 10th planet"

    That's because Pluto is a Disney fabrication and doesn't really exist, it was all a big PR stunt to try to bring him up to Mickey's level.
    *adjusts tinfoil hat*

    • It's true. Have YOU ever been to pluto?
      Didnt think so.

      *adjusts electromagnetic leadhat*

    • Re:Pluto (Score:1, Redundant)

      by kramer ( 19951 )
      Pluto is the 9th planet.

      1. Mercury
      2. Venus
      3. Earth
      4. Mars
      5. Jupiter
      6. Saturn
      7. Uranus
      8. Neptune
      9. Pluto

      I believe he's talking about newly-discovered Sedna.
  • Did they take the curvature of the earth into account? I didn't think so.

    This is not my sig
    • I was thinking the same thing. Model's wrong! Guaranteed!
      • Well if you think about, even if they did take into effect of the curvature of the earth, it sure is funny how the schools and museums just so happened to be where the planets are to be placed for this model!!!
    • Uh, no, the planets are hardly ever in a straight line. Just imaging all the orbits are perpendicular to the surface of the Earth. A truly accurate model of the solar system would have all the planets moving around the model of the Sun on elliptic tracks... then you could complain about the curvature of the earth.
    • Well, umm, space-time is curved, sorta, so they could go with that.

      That, or have Pluto somewhere deep beneath the mantle of the earth.

  • U. Maine System (Score:2, Informative)

    by Dr. Mojura ( 584120 )
    I thought the Maine Solar System Model [maine.edu] was supposed to be the world's largest:

    At forty miles from Pluto to Sun, the largest complete three-dimensional scale model of the Solar System in the World.

    Although the one mentioned above [bradley.edu] also claims 40 miles from Sun to Pluto. One of them has to be the largest, although the one in Illinois claims to have Guinness backing them. U. Maine may not have applied for the claim.

    • Re:U. Maine System (Score:2, Informative)

      by hkfczrqj ( 671146 )
      This swedish model [astro.su.se] seems to be the largest one, with a 1:20 million scale (Pluto - Sun distance is about 300 km). However, the british model will be even larger.
    • A 3D model has to accurately depict the inclination of the planets' orbits. Since there is no single straight line that passes through all 9 (10, whatever) orbits that means some of the planets will be above (or below) the ground, which becomes less and less feasible as you increase the scale. The largest 3D model probably is in Maine, the larger ones are all just 2D (flat) models. I would like to know where the largest *4D* model is, showing motion over time (as I can do here on my PC with a variety of
    • the one in Illinois claims to have Guinness backing them.

      I would think the one in the UK would have Guinness backing it, and any in the US would have to settle for Budweiser.
  • If it's anything the US has west of the Rockies, it's large empty tracks of nothing but dirt and sand. I'm sure this project in the UK will be cool and all, but with all those trees and hills and cities getting the way, well, it just doesn't do much for me. Now if they set something like this up in the Great Basin Desert (190,000 sq mi) and you could actually stand at one planet and use high powered binoculars to see the next closet planet ...it'd probably give somebody a much better idea of how big the s
  • Looks like the old contender for biggest model is so big that they lost it track of it... [bradley.edu]
  • 1:15million, this brings the distance between the Sun (positioned in Cheshire at the Jodrell Bank Telescope site) and the Earth to 15km The (average)distance from Sun to Earth is 149 million km.

    15 * 15million km = 225 million km != the distance from Sun to earth

    How about a scale model ofBritney Spears [mithuro.com] instead?

  • Basic math (Score:4, Informative)

    by product byproduct ( 628318 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @01:56PM (#8621920)
    Would have been great if they had included probes such as Voyager 1.

    A 1:15million scale model of the ~4m-wide Voyager 1 probe would measure ~250 nanometers.

    Also the BBC says:
    The scale of 1 to 15 million reduces the distance between the Earth and the Sun to about 16km (10 miles).

    150,000,000 km / 15,000,000 = 10 km, not 16 km.
  • This reminded me of an article on /. detailing the construction of a scale model of the Solar System in Maine, USA. [maine.edu] It was posted in an article from June of last year on /..
    Here is the link [slashdot.org]
    The Maine model is to scale, 1:93 million.
  • The Peoria Chapter of the Astronomical Soceity got a bunch of kids together via school groups and constructed the same thing in 1993 [lakeview-museum.org]. It stretched out all over the city of Peoria, IL.

    From the site -- "Centered on the Sun at Lakeview Museum, the farthest planet, Pluto, is 40 miles away in Kewanee."

  • Saturn knocked out of orbit after 12 ton lorry crashed into it. Film at 11.

  • Planet 10? What 10th planet would this be? I know that recently a planetoid in our solar system (furthest known thing orbiting our sun) was found, but no "10th" planet.
    • It really depends on the definition of "planet," which astronomers have yet to agree on. By the definition of a body that is more massive than all other combined mass in a similar orbit, Sedna would not be a planet. Of course, neither would Pluto, so we would only have eight planets, but since many astronomers don't like the idea of Pluto being a planet, this definition is fairly prevelant. By the definition of any body not orbiting a planet but is made round by its own gravity, Sedna would be... what... th

  • Eh... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tirinal ( 667204 )
    I don't really understand what the point of this is, aside from bragging rights. Ideally, the whole point of having scale models is to convey to the viewer the dimensions of space involved. If you have an Earth globe and a Sun globe attached to a pair of strings in a dimly-lit room, you immediately know that perhaps our insignificant little planet isn't quite as large as we had believed.

    But what happens when you visit the location of, say, the Jupiter location somewhere northeast of Paris? Its a completely

    • Making useful scale models (Score:5, Informative)

      by logpoacher ( 662865 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @04:16PM (#8622740)
      Completely agree with you - it cannot possibly create a good sense of scale (especially for children) because few people have a national sense of scale - it's just hours on a motorway. I remember how surprised one of my friends was, on doing a cross UK cycle ride (Lands End to John O'Groats), and realizing that the Scottish border was pretty close to the half-way point.

      I made a scale model of the solar system for my kids in the field out the back. You need 600m of field. Here are the scales, shrinking by a factor of 1e11 (so 100km -> 1mm), giving diameter and distance from sun:

      • Sun (Sol) 140 mm -
      • Mercury: 0.5 mm 6m
      • Venus: 1.2 mm 10m
      • Earth: 1.3 mm 15m
      • (Moon: 0.3 mm 0.04m from Earth)
      • Mars: 0.7 mm 23m
      • Jupiter: 14.3 mm 78m
      • Saturn: 12.1 mm 142m
      • Uranus: 5.1 mm 287m
      • Neptune: 5.0 mm 450m
      • Pluto: 0.2 mm 591m
      • AlphaC-A: 167 mm 4,200 km
      • Sirius: 249 mm 8,600 km
      • Betelgeuse: 37 m 427,200 km
      • Milky Way: 100,000,000 km
      (Sorry about the crap formatting - I couldn't get this through the /. lameness filter without losing tabulation.)

      And it's fantastic!! You make the planets out of blu-tac or dough. It's great making the tiny ones - you're making a sphere 0.2mm across! - you roll out a thin hair of material and cut it with a knife. Jupiter's about the width of my thumb. You put little rings on the ringed planets. And you use a balloon for the Sun. Then you pace out the positions, and place them on the path, with a little marker so you can see where they are. Combine this with a good play with Celestia [shatters.net], and you're talking about some pretty scarily educational stuff. Celestia's fantastic, but the exponential speed control (though totally necessary) means that you can't get a perspective on size and distance.

      Then you reveal (from UK) that the nearest star is in New York! (actually, that's a bit far, Cairo is a better match), and Sirius (which they know) is in San Francisco...

      And look at Betelgeuse! - it's HUGE! - twice the size of our house - and it's about where the moon is. And the Milky Way ... well, it all gets abstract again. But it's interesting to stand at Pluto, look towards the Sun, close your eyes a bit, and imagine that you're on the edge of an empty ball with the Sun at the centre. And then turn around, and there's nothing else before America... just emptiness....

      Pretty good.

      And what's weird is that so few people have any sense of scale here - my wife figured that Alpha Centauri would be in a town a few km away.

      I guess that this big model they're making is a PR stunt - it raises awareness, and gets people to play with things like Celestia. After all, they seem to be trying to create a memorable impression and a sense of distributed ownership ("We own Jupiter") rather than actually draw the big picture.

      • I like a challenge so I gave it a try. The only problem with using periods is that sometimes it looks like the number is less than zero when it actually isn't; however, the only fractions are numbers that have a leading zero, so for instance the ".142m" is actually 142m.

        I used the <ecode> tag, and no <br> at the end of each line since the ecode tag dumps what's inside as it is formatted (except that it eliminates duplicate spaces).

        Body . . . . .Diameter . Distance From Sun
        Sun (Sol). . . 140

    • You cannot have a to-scale model in a room.
      It's impossible.
      As long as your earth is visible, your model is NOT to scale and cant give a real impression of the dimensions.

      The earth diameter is 1/400000 of the distance Sun-Pluto.
      So even if your room is a enormous large hall (400m - 4 soccer fields long), your model of earth would still be only 1mm in diameter. It would be invisible.

      Actually, the string you attach the earth on would be larger than the "globe" of the earth.

      If you use anything interesting for

  • Legend of the Mapmaker (Score:5, Insightful)

    by VoidEngineer ( 633446 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @02:16PM (#8622040)
    There's an old legend about a Mapmaker, who was the finest mapmaker in his entire country. His maps were the most accurate, detailed, and well-documented maps available in the entire country; possibly the entire world.

    One day, the King came to the Mapmaker, and requested a new map of the country, that would be more accurate than any map that had ever been made. And so, the Mapmaker made a map of the entire country that included every house, every road, and every lake. The map was so big, he had to store it in a barn.

    The King was so delighted that he commissioned another map of the country, which was to be even more accurate. And so, the Mapmaker made a new map which was even more accurate, and included ever room and piece of furniture in the country, every foot path, and every well. The map was so big, he had to had to store the map in the fields behind the castle, and it had to be moved periodically so that the grass wouldn't die underneath.

    The King was so thrilled with the new map, that he commissioned yet another map from the Mapmaker. It was to be the greatest map ever made. And so, the Mapmaker made another map, the best map ever made. The Mapmaker included every nail, every rock, every blade of grass, and every puddle in the entire country. When he was finished, he presented the map to the King, and there was a very big ceremony, for they had to unroll the map so the King could look at it. You see, the map was so detailed, that it was as big as the entire country! And when they unrolled the map, it blocked out the sun and stars in all the land.

    Moral of the story: A map with a scale of 1:1 isn't of much use. Maps are usefull to the extent that they can compress information, are transportable, and are abstractions of reality.

  • It's in Sweden (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The largest model solar system is in Sweden [astro.su.se], with the Globe Arena acting as the sun.
    • The Sweden Solar System is the world's largest model of our planetary system, at a scale of 1:20 million. The Sun is represented by the Globe arena in Stockholm, the largest spherical building in the world. The planets are placed and sized according to scale with the inner planets being in Stockholm and Jupiter (diameter 7.3 m) at the International airport Arlanda. The outer planets follow in the same direction with Saturn in Uppsala and Pluto in Delsbo, 300 km from the Globe. At each planet station, exhibi
  • If you're going to ask for the 10th planet(oid), I assume you mean Sedna. But if you're going to include Sedna, you really shouldn't forget Quaoar [caltech.edu]. It's too small to be considered a planet, but so is Sedna.
  • Caption on the bottom picture:
    Distant Uranus will be sited in Bath

    heehee, 2nd grade humor still gets me
  • So they included that stupid rock called Pluto, too? Luckily not that Sedna, next step would probably had been including every known asteroid that happens to be circulating sun.

  • I can see it now (Score:4, Funny)

    by MajorDick ( 735308 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @02:28PM (#8622112)
    I will be visiting the UK again and will tie one on at the local pub (yet again) and be the FIRST MAN TO BE ARRESTED FOR PISSING IN PUBLIC ON MARS !

  • The largest solar system model (Score:4, Informative)

    by fredrikj ( 629833 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @02:29PM (#8622118) Homepage
    The world's current largest solar system model is located in Sweden [astro.su.se], scale 1:20 million.

  • Have you tried Celestia? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Slinky Saves the Wor ( 759676 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @02:42PM (#8622211) Homepage
    You can also boldly go where no man has gone before from the comfort of your own home and your chair, and the vicinity of your refridgerator and assorted beverages, with Celestia [shatters.net], a real-time 3D space simulator.
  • I remember performance artist Chris Burden set up a huge piece called "scale model of the solar system" way back in the early 1980s. I saw a picture of a couple of the locations, I think the sun was down in Newport Beach, Mercury was installed at a Ferrari dealership in Beverly Hills, etc. Burden even went to the trouble of calcluating the REAL positions of the planets on the opening day of the exhibit, and positioning the planets on the earth in relation to position, not just distance. You would have neede

  • Interesting to note is the distinct lack of a 10th planet :)

    You can talk about whether Sedna should be called a planet or an asteroid for ever, but really it's just trivial. You could also ask why several other objects haven't been called planets, or why pluto has. The best answer you're ever likely to get is that changing things would be too much controversy to be bothered with, it would make lots of teaching material out of date, and it would start a slippery slope to make the names more ambiguo

  • It was covered in Smithsonian Magazine [si.edu] last year. There's quite a bit of interview with the creator, Kevin McCartney.

    I could swear that I read of another one out west(?) with the Sun represented as a planetarium dome.
  • I mean, c'mon, a real model would be 3d.

  • I though this sounded cool... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...until I saw this.

    "Planet Earth will be sited in Macclesfield. "

    If the world was a person it's navel would be Macclesfield. Not a good place or a bad place, just strangely pointless and in need of a clean.
  • We visited Jodrell Bank last summer as I had fond memories from my youth.

    The scope itself is impressive especially when moving around as they were continually doing when we were there.

    However the exhibits in the visitor center are lame to the extreme.

    Five quid just to park wasn't pleasant either. It's in the middle of nowhere for Christ sakes.

  • 1:15 Million Model (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DrLudicrous ( 607375 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @04:32PM (#8622810) Homepage
    Did anybody notice that if the 1:15 million scale quoted in the Slashdot article is correct that 10 scale miles is 150 million miles? The average distance from the Earth to the Sun is roughly 93 million miles, so 150 million is a about 50% too high. Which is wrong, the scale provided or the scale distance quoted?
  • "Sweden Solar System" is 1:20 million in scale, with the sun represented as the Globe Arena in Stockholm. The Globe Arena is 110 meter in diameter, but was not built for this purpose, of course.

    http://www.astro.su.se/swesolsyst/moreinfo.html
    • From this [astro.su.se] link:

      The Sweden Solar System is the world's largest model of our planetary system, at a scale of 1:20 million. The Sun is represented by the Globe arena in Stockholm, the largest spherical building in the world. The planets are placed and sized according to scale with the inner planets being in Stockholm and Jupiter (diameter 7.3 m) at the International airport Arlanda. The outer planets follow in the same direction with Saturn in Uppsala and Pluto in Delsbo, 300 km from the Globe. At each planet

  • But wait. I need to know ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tjp($)pjT ( 266360 ) on Saturday March 20, 2004 @10:19PM (#8624814)
    Will it update itself in realtime?

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