How BIG Is Our Solar System? | Earth Lab

space is big really really really big planets are big stars are massive and the distances between them are beyond stupid if I told you that our solar system is nearly 40 trillion kilometers across you probably nod your head and say something like yeah I thought would be something like that that seems like a lot and it is a lot but if you like me you probably zone out after the first few zeros and a number like that so to give you an idea of how really weird Onkel asleep massive our solar system is I'm going to take you on a journey but first we need to scale everything down to something that we can all appreciate taking inspiration from the 1972 photograph taken of the earth by the crew of Apollo 17 I'm going to shrink our planet down to the proverbial blue marble at this one to a billion scale every centimeter represents 10,000 kilometers and now I can show you the whole solar system without even leaving accounting so without further ado let us boldly go to a football pitch [Music] and so up to our first location and the center of our solar system sun's out guns out even when the earth is scaled down to the size of a marble the Sun is still nearly unmetered and a half across 1.3 million earths can fit inside the Sun in fact this lovely big ball of plasma accounts for ninety-nine point eight six percent of the entire solar system's mass but no time for trivia we must continue your path paced 55 56 57 58 and around 58 million miles from the Sun or at our scale the length of roughly five London buses we encounter the first planet Mercury which compared to the Sun would be the size of a tiny teeny weeny little piece coincidentally an excellent destination for the calorie-conscious and on Mercury you'll only be about 38% of your earthly weight I know I said we've got no time for trivia but really what is the point otherwise traveling another 50 million miles and we encounter the orbit of Venus here roughly the size of a hazelnut we are now roughly the length of the football pitch away from the Sun and even though it's not the closest planet to the Sun Venus is the hottest because of its big carbon dioxide atmosphere and clouds of sulphuric acid temperatures on the surface are on average of blistering 468 degrees Celsius earth the blue marble that I'd Rock from the Sun home to everyone you know what everyone that's ever lived we are now about 150 million miles from the Sun the length of 13 and 1/2 London buses at our scale at the size of a marble it's all there is to show for the massive planet that you're standing on right now our planet has a privileged place in the solar system falling within this so-called Goldilocks zone where it's not too hot and not too cold and water so critical for life as we know it today's liquid any closer and it pulls away but further away and it freezes solid quite frankly it's girlish and when the earth is the size of a marble just 1.3 centimeters across the moon is like a pepper about a quarter of the size still the distance between them might surprise you less like this and more like this and now we come to the last rocky planet of the inner solar system named after the Roman god of war mars is 80 million kilometers from the earth and although at this scale is less than a centimeter across we are now around two and a quarter football pitches away from the Sun the fighting Mars only being just less than half the size of Earth it actually has around the same land ma this of course is because 70% of the earth is covered in water but what it lacks in h2o it more than makes up for in volcano Olympus Long's been huge 21 kilometers il all K know is this tallest in the known solar system well done Mars you rock as we pull out on our map we start to get a feel for the huge distances of just the inner solar system at almost a kilometer up the Sun is barely visible with the planet being on sub-pixel scales continuing our journey we passed through the asteroid belt a huge 150 million kilometer expanse of rocks before arriving at our next planet Jupiter 780 at over three-quarters of a kilometer from our Sun we have arrived at the biggest planet in the whole solar system here it is disappointed you shouldn't be you could still fit 1,300 Earth's inside this monster Jupiter is the first of our gas giants with a dense atmosphere made up of hydrogen and helium and enough gravity to keep over 60 moons in its orbit we are now 780 million kilometers from the Sun and the scale of the solar system relative to our planet is really apparent now another 650 million kilometres and we come to the second of our gas giant Saturn we nearly one and a half kilometers away from our model Sun on this glorious Industrial Estate and Saturn is the size of a shotput although once you add on the Magnificent rings it more than doubled in size it too is large enough to shepherd over 60 moons including Titan with a nitrogen rich smoky atmosphere and methane rain that's basically a storm of liquid armed another 1440 million kilometres and we have our next planet insert joke here double the distance again and we've made it to your anus hehehe or as any tired science teacher would call it Uranus it's called out here nearly 3 billion kilometers from our Sun and at a scale where 28 football pitches into our journey and this gas giant is the size of a snooker ball no not the brown one but a lovely shade of blue another cool fact about Europe is that it's the only planet in the solar system that spins on its side so rather and like this it's been like this continuing our journey another 1.7 billion kilometers and we come to our next planet and our first pub time at last our final planet and I know we are thinking but I'll clear that up in a mode it's another blue beauty Neptune is also similar in size to excludable but we're now four and a half kilometers from our starting point which is about four and a half billion kilometers in space here the Sun is barely distinguishable from other stars in the sky and it has the strongest winds of any planet at over 2,000 kilometres an hour all of which makes it pretty damn cold at about minus 200 degrees Celsius but who cares Neptune has the only moon in the solar system that's all it's in the opposite direction to everything else and that's even cooler I never said the jokes would be any good and now we travel another 1.5 billion kilometers to our last planet and I use that term very very loosely in fact it's just wrong okay I'm nearly 6 billion kilometres 60 football pitches away from our Sun now and at another pub and it's time for the violins please because we have arrived at the sad demoted dwarf planet of Pluto width of its planet status in 2006 on the basis of it not having Zubat up all the rogue rocks in its orbit pluto is probably the most famously defended of the dwarf planet at our scale is the size of a small peppercorn it was recently visited by the new Horizons spacecraft which was ironically launched the same year at poor Pluto was downgraded photos sent back from a flyby revealed a big icy heart covering one side of the dwarf planet bet you feel guilty now a International Astronomical Union yeah sure but we're not finished there there's one more place to visit before I can go home welcome to errors Pluto is by no means the only dwarf planet it's certainly not the farthest from the Sun it's not even the biggest or Eris orbits are staggering 14 billion kilometers out from the center of the solar system that's the length of more than 300 football pictures at our scale and still it's only the size of a peppercorn in fact it's so far away that my budget did stretch to get there now at almost fifty kilometers from the earth we can really appreciate our truly vast solar system at this height we can't even see individual houses let alone the peppercorn size Eris or even Jupiter at the size of a grapefruit it really is mind-boggling but I just hope that it goes some way to helping you realize just how stupidly massive our solar system really is and if it doesn't well I'm not doing it again however I will be reading all your fantastic comments filled with even more juicy planetary trivia that I hope you're going to leave below oh and as always don't forget to subscribe for more science video [Music]

Channel: BBC Earth Lab

Views: 578,788

Rating: 4.8212705 out of 5

Keywords: Head Squeeze, headsqueeze, science, BBC, Brit Lab, BRITLAB, earth lab, earthlab, bbc science, space, solar system, planets, scale of solar system, size of solar system, universe, sun, mercury, representation of solar system, solar system facts, trivia, venus, space facts, space trivia, earth, solar system model, mars, jupiter, dwarf planet, saturn, model solar system, moon, uranus, neptune, pluto, eris

Id: uXWtf6O1A9M

Length: 9min 33sec (573 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 16 2017