Astronomy / Space Some relative distances.

[Surfinjo]

The wave length of green light is approximately 5nM or 0.0000005 metres

If we scale down a meter to the length of a wave length of green light,

The distance to the sun will be about 7480 metres

A light year will be about 4730365236.3 metres

The distance to the nearest star will be about 20340570516 metres

 

[MonkeyD]

The wave length of green light is approximately 5nM or 0.0000005 metres

If we scale down a meter to the length of a wave length of green light,

The distance to the sun will be about 7480 metres

A light year will be about 4730365236.3 metres

The distance to the nearest star will be about 20340570516 metres

I think you got something wrong there. Green light has a wavelenght of approx 500 nm (nM are Newtonmetre). 5nm would be 0.000000005 metre (0.0000005 are correct).

The distance to the Sun would be 74800 metres.

The lenght of a light year is correct (4730365236,2904m)

The distance to the nearest Star (Proxima Centauri, 4.243ly) would be 20070939697,58017 metres.

Dont know if its all correct, maybe I have miscalculated something. If so, feel free to correct my corrections

 

[Surfinjo]

Yep, I made the initial mistake, 5nM instead of 500nM. Doh! Thanks for pointing out.

My purpose was to give some comparative perspective of the actual distances we are dealing with in space. I initially did this a number of years ago, ( back when we still used those new fangeled pocket electronic calculators, which cost a fortune and had batteries which lasted about 30 mins tops!) after a discussion where a number of us attempted to estimate scale needed to reduce the average distance between Pluto and the Earth to the length of the rather long garden in which we were sitting at the time.

Given a few of the thoughts some seemed to be entertaining here of experiencing some sort of travel to other stars, I thought it might be a contribution.

The Sun is, of course, about 150,000,000,000 M from Earth, so that reduces to 150000000000 X .0000005 =75000 M (I've rounded the distance up since it's a mean of a ellipse anyway)

A light year is 9.4605284 x 10¹⁵ which equates to 9460730472580800 M . That reduces to 9460730472580800 X .0000005 = 4730365236 M