Our Place in Space
Our Place in Space
Quite remarkable 8.1 km scale model of the solar system animated Liverpool City Centre from 14 October to 6 November 2022.
With distance comes perspective...
It started from miniature of our Sun and Earth on Church Street, running down along it to the iconic waterfront, Albert Dock and then on a solitary path through the Trans Pennine Trail along the left north bank of the Rover Mersey. It ended with tiny Pluto at the Otterspool Promenade.
A very intriguing walk. Quite peculiar indeed. Walking through the streets of Liverpool, first through a lot of dense crowd, similar to the solar system where the first planets a gather closer.
Being able to not only imagine the the scales and distances, but to experience it physically was a incredible eye-opener for many. What a tiny-tiny cosmic seed the planet Earth we live on really is.
Just figure this out - the scale on that journey was 591 million to 1!
At this scale the Sun is 2.35 m in diameter, the Earth is 2.2 cm, and Pluto only 4 mm!
Mind boggling and blowing.
Continuing on and on along the trial, we came to the periphery of our solar system, where it really is just the beginning of even bigger distances that cannot be comprehended by our mundane minds. What a unique experience!
 |
| Look at the distance from Mars perspective |
Monty Python – Galaxy Song
"Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!"
The entire trial walk should take about 1.5 hours... our video is not that long but we tried our best to give you right perspective :-)
More: