If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel (Accurate Map of the Solar System!)

Alright children, settle down. OP, thank you for sharing this. Some months back, I was on a non-stop flight from Dubai to LA. It was 16.5 hours long, and we covered about 13,500 miles. Our cruise speed was ~560 mph. That's less than pitiful in the solar scale.

We wake every day and see our Sun shining. It takes light 8.3 minutes to travel this distance: 670 million mph. Many of us drive at 80 mph on the freeway. By car on I-10 speeds, it would take 130 years to drive to the sun. Grover Cleveland won the 1884 presidential election. Had I started driving after casting my ballot, I'd get to the Sun in the fall of 2014 when the Texans season begins.

If I flew on an aeroplane, it would take ~19 years to get there. That means if my Emirates flight had departed during Game 1 of the 1995 NBA Finals with Rockets vs. Magic, I would land today. Not a fan of the Boeing 747/Airbus A380? Do you miss the Concorde?

The British Airways flight via Concorde would still take 8 years. Had I departed during the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, I'd reach the Sun this summer. If the space shuttle, Endeavour, were still around the journey would be 7 months. That's from when the Texans beat the Vikings in their first 2013 pre-season game until today. That's much better than getting there by car or aeroplane. :grin:

TL;DR

Car: 130 years to the Sun
747: 19 years
Concorde: 8 years
Shuttle: 7 months

 

Earth to Saturn
Car: 1040 years
747: 152 years
Concorde: 64 years
Shuttle: 4.5 years

Earth to Pluto
Car: 5200 years
747: 760 years
Concorde: 64 years
Shuttle: 4.5 years

Earth to the Solar System's border (heliopause)
Car: 15,600 years
747: 2280 years
Concorde: 192 years
Shuttle: 13.5 years

One light-year is 525 times the distance from Earth to the Solar System's border. The closest star to us is just over 4 light-years away, or about 35 million years away by car at I-10's speed limit.

The center of our Milky Way, where a super-massive black hole lies, is 26,000 light-years away. That's over 2 trillion years away by car. Andromeda, the closest spiral galaxy to us is 96 times the distance from Earth to the Milky Way's center. I'll stop now. Good night.

 

Drat, just saw an error. Pluto is 320 years away by the Concorde and 23 years away by a space shuttle.

 

Highly educational.

<iframe src="http://www.ebaumsworld.com/media/embed/982961" width="567" height="345" frameborder="0"></iframe>

 

In this model, I just realized that the standard side scrolling speed in Firefox (and maybe IE, Chrome, Safari) is 1.7 billion mph, or about 2.5x faster than light speed. If the speed of light were a 35 mph zone, you'd be speeding at 90 mph in it according to this model.

What's sad is even if we somehow could go this fast in real life, it would still take 1 million years to reach Andromeda.

 

For those who hate scrolling.

Warp speed baby.

 

1. Contradictory.
2. Doesn't compute.
3. In your dreams, bucko.

On I-10 speeds, we would probably take 200 years to drive to the sun.

 

SwoLy is "Driving Miss Daisy" to the sun...

Spoiler

BamBam is "Driving Daisy Duke" to the sun...

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