Our Solar System...

yup. sure makes you wonder, don't it?

 

'Space' is very aptly named....

 

That just illustrated how dirty my monitor screen is.

 

A question that fools a lot of people: If you have a one-foot diameter globe of the Earth, how far away should the Moon be placed so it's at the correct distance (to scale) from the Earth?

 

one foot?

 

Well......
The Earth is about 7900 miles in diameter (it's slightly oblated due to rotation...about 25 miles worth.)
If you use a mean distance of about 238,900 miles from the Earth to the Moon, wouldn't that be about 30 and a quarter feet?


The real question is.....how far into the Solar System can you get from the Earth if you lay all of the dollar bills in our National Debt, end to end?

I tried to work on this a little and here's what I saw so far (courtesy of Answers.com)


The dollar bill is 6.6294 centimetres long.
A mile is equivalent to 1.609344 Kilometres which equates to 160,934.4 cm.

So now if we divide 160,934.4 by 6.6294 we will get the number of dollars end to end that make up a mile. That's

160934.4 / 6.6294 = 24,275.8621

So lets call it 24,276 dollar bills or $24,276

If you want to go all the way around the Earth (at the equator), you'll need 604,520,952 dollar bills.

I'll do some more with this later.

 

At a guess, a bit more than 30 feet?

 

ETC and hkmb have it right. Most people underestimate.

Can we get a sponsor to send us those dollar bills so we can do a real-world test?

 

A dollar bill is 6.14 inches long that is equivalent to 15.6 centimeters. That would be 10,318.2 dollars per mile. Using 238,855 miles as the average distance to the moon it would take $2,464,553,661.00 dollars to reach the moon.

You can do your own metric conversion.

 

So....
Our National Debt can be quantified by laying dollar bills end to end in a line that will go to the Moon and back.......like 4 times.

Hmmmmm......

 

I like these scaled space things. The one I recall seeing was the relative size of the earth and planets compared to our sun, then the sun against similar classes of stars, then the largest one of those starts was a pixel against others much larger stars, then that largest one was a pixel against larger stars. It really puts it in perspective to see our planet compared to the sun, and the sun compared to huge stars. Makes ya think

 

one distance i've always wondered about is, how far can you go, before you hit the wall?

 

Look again. You lost 3 decimal points.

Or, pave that paper trail to the moon with $1000 bills.

 

And Einstein realized that was the wrong question. It was how fast you can go before you hit the wall.

 

I guess that's what happens when you're dealing with numbers that big....

It's a sh**t-load of money!
That's one of the things that I was thinking about when I was scrolling through all of those tabs on my way from the sun to the earth.
Humans only dealt with that many zeroes when talking about viruses or trips to other stars...........before the last few decades,

 

i'm no einstein, that's for sure.

 

Who is?

 

Here's a great short film on that subject, made in 1977 by the renowned industrial and graphic designers Charles & Ray Eames:

"Powers of Ten takes us on an adventure in magnitudes. Starting at a picnic by the lakeside in Chicago, this famous film transports us to the outer edges of the universe. Every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only as a speck of light among many others."

Powers of Ten (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles and Ray Eames - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Funny thing.
I remember reading an Einstein story where a student asked him what distance he used for that between the Earth and the Moon.
I don't remember the exact answer, but it was something like:
"I don't know. I don't memorize things like that."

While trying to look up exactly what he said, I came across this.
As Mr. Serling would say: "Submitted for your approval..."

Mr. Bean vs. Einstein
Aside posted on July 31, 2014 by TurboBlaze
Einstein and Mr. Bean were sitting next to each other on a long flight.

Einstein said, “Let’s play a game. I will ask you a question, if you don’t know the answer, you pay me only $5 and then you ask me a question and if I don’t know the answer, I will pay you $500.”

Mr. Bean agreed. Einstein asked the first question: What’s the distance from the Earth to the moon?
Mr.Bean didn’t say a word, reached his pocket and pulled out a $5.

Now, it was Mr.Bean’s turn.

He asked Einstein: What goes up a hill with 3 legs and comes down on 4 legs?

Einstein searched the internet and asked all his smart friends. After an hour he gave Mr.Bean $500. Einstein went nuts and asks: Well, so what goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four?

Mr. Bean quietly reached his pocket and gave Einstein $5.