Hello friends, today I want us to try a bit about the distances in our Solar System. Initially, the experience of referring what is related to the distances that involve our Solar System can be somewhat complex, or not very comprehensible, because to say, for example, that Jupiter has an average diameter of 138,000 km, or that Saturn is at a distance Sun mean of 1,427,700,000 km may not clarify much, since our daily personal experience does not deal with such high numbers and, therefore, lack any intuitive reference for us.

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Let's adopt a new approach scale

In order to try to provide a familiar image that helps us to understand these large figures that intervene in the domains of the Solar System, we will arbitrarily reduce all their dimensions, but we will conserve all their mutual relations. Specifically, it will be assumed that the diameter of the Earth, which is actually 12,472 km, is reduced to 1 dm (10 m) and that all other dimensions of the Solar System are reduced in the same relation.

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If such a thing happened, the Sun would concentrate on a sphere 11 meters in diameter (the height of a building with 4 floors) and the first planet, Mecurio, would rotate at a distance of 449 meters, its diameter being just 3 cm. Venus would rotate at 841.6 meters and would be 9.3 cm in diameter. The Earth would be at a distance just over 1 km, with a diameter of 10 meters (1 dm).

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The next star, Mars, would rotate to 1, 785 and its diameter would be 5.6 cm. Jupiter would be no less than 6 km and would constitute a sphere of 1 m in diameter. Smaller dimensions would have Saturn (94 cm in diameter) that would turn to 11, 192 meters from the Sun, while Uranus, with its diameter of 4 dm, would move to 15 from the sun king. Finally, Neptune, located 36 km from the Sun, would be a sphere 40 mt (4 dm) in diameter, and Pluto, 46.4 km away, would be somewhat larger than Mars.

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A conclusive approach

In astronomical practice, it is customary to measure the distances involved in the Solar System, taking as a reference the distance from the Earth to the Sun as a unit of measurement. This is called the astronomical unit, which is abbreviated u.a, and the most precise measurements assign a value of 149.598.000 km.

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In this context, and taking as a basis the reduced scheme of the Solar System, which we have just assumed, we can obtain a final conclusion with respect to the Solar System: in it almost everything is empty, and the planets they move apart by distances that are huge compared to their dimensions. The Sun is the only star whose diameter is in accordance with such distances, however, seen from Pluto, it would only be small luminous dot.