stars

[fatalbert]

Hi everyone,am new here,what a fantastic site,the answer to another topic prompted me to ask the following question. If the planet Earth was the size of a pea,how far would the nearest star be.I look forward to any answers.

[heathfield]

Alpha Centauri is the nearest star, and is approximately the same size as the sun.
If the Earth was the size of a pea, the sun would be the size of a basketball, and so would Alpha Centauri, But on this scale it would be 8000 km away!

[THECORBYLOON]

The Sun is the nearest star and would be about 152 feet away if earth were pea-sized.

[kempie]

You need to specify the size of your pea else the figures for distance will vary widely.

If your "average" pea has a diameter of around 10 mm then for ease of calculation I will take the range of size as 8.5 mm to 12.75 mm. (8.5 being ⅔ of 12.75)

Thus:
Pea = 12.75 x10^-3 m (12.75 mm)
Earth = 12.75 x10^6 m
Scale = 1 : 1 x10^9

Distance Sun ~ 150 x10^9 m (93.2 million miles)
Scaled Sun distance ~ 150 m

Distance Proxima Centauri ~ 4 x10^16 m (4.22 light years)
Scaled P.Cent. dist. ~ 4 x10^7 m (40,000 km)

and

Pea = 8.5 mm
Scaled Sun distance ~ 100 m
Scaled P.Cent. dist. ~ 2.67 x10^7 m (26,700 km)

[landie]

It would still be the same distance away, but the people living on the Pea would be very tiny.

[theleeroy55]

if the earth was the size of a pea, how big would peas be ?

[mibn2cweus]

Peas stop! I'm so cornfused�

[kempie]

theleeroy55... about 10 picometres, 0.1 �ngstr�m or one third of the diameter of a Helium atom.

[jake-the-peg]

You think that's somethin?

If you shrunk the earth to that scale the observable Universe would be scaled to a size something like 20 times real the distance to alpha centauri.

I'm also very disappointed that you all ignored proxima centauri (the real closest star - other than the sun of course) presumably just because it's not visible to the naked eye.

I fully expect a interstellar dipomatic incident to ensue

[kempie]

Ahem... who ignored Proxima Centauri?

[jake-the-peg]

Apologies I mis-read your P for an A at the bottom after Heathfield's post!

Interstellar war averted!

[mibn2cweus]

. . . Whew! ! ! Close one.

Peas be with you, Earthlings