“Space, is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly
hugely mindbogglingly big it is.” (Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy) The simple truth is that intersteller
distances will not fit into the human imagination. Even light,
which travels so fast that you generally don't think of it
traveling at all, takes time to journey between the stars. It takes
eight minutes to journey from the sun to the Earth, and four years
more to arrive at the sun's nearest steller neighbor, Alpha
Centauri. For light to reach the other side of the galaxy takes
rather longer: five hundred thousand years.
This cache was inspired by a scale model of our very own solar system. The model is
located in Peoria, Illinois and was featured on the Discovery
Channel.
Science fiction has long told of travel between Earth and the
planets and stars. It all sounds very well and good — plausible
even — until you consider the distances to be covered and time
required on a human scale. According to the 2001 Guinness World
Records Apollo 10 holds the record for the highest speed attained
by a manned vehicle: 39,897 km/h (24,791 mph). At that speed it
would take about 82 days to reach Mars, the only other planet in
our solar system that could conceivably be colonized by humans.
Travel to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri which is 4.35 light
years distant would take 117,672 years! Clearly, at our
current level of technological development, this is just not
possible. In fact, the fastest man made object is the Voyager
spacecraft which left the solar system at a speed of about 70,000
mph. At that rate it won't cover the distance to the nearest star
for about 41,674 years.
So, what about the starship Enterprise of Star Trek fame? Could
it make it? Well... it depends on where you want to go.
Interplanetary travel within our own solar system would certainly
be no problem. In fact, travel to Alpha Centauri could be easily
managed. The Enterprise employs “warp” technology. A speed given as
a “warp factor” is translated to a factor of c, or the speed
of light. Given a warp factor W it can be converted to a
multiple of c by raising it to the 3rd power
(W3). For example, warp 1 would be 13
x c, warp 2 would be 23 x c, or 8 times
the speed of light, warp 3 would be 33 x c, or 27
times the speed of light, etc. (Yes, I know I'm a geek for knowing
all this useless stuff!)
Traveling at warp 1 we could reach Alpha Centauri in about 4.3
years. If we push down on the gas a bit we could get there at warp
2 in about 198 days. If we were in a real hurry and floored it, we
could get there in just over 2 days at our maximum speed, warp 9
(or 729-times c, the speed of light). And that's a nearby
star. The Milky Way galaxy, our home, is 100,000 light years in
diameter. From here to the center of our galaxy is just 25,000
light years. At top speed the Enterprise could get there in 137
years.
Facts, figures, numbers... They're hard to comprehend. They're
nearly impossible to visualize. In the spirit of that model in
Peoria, I thought it would be fun to design an actual scale model
of the solar system that anyone could “build” using items found
around the house. Your model will help you visualize the
vastness of space.
For the purposes of our model we'll use a basketball to
represent the sun. Some other things you'll need are:
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3 grains of salt (Mercury, Pluto, and the
Moon)
2 sesame seeds (Venus and Earth)
1 mustard seed (Mars)
A quarter (Jupiter)
A penny (Saturn)
2 asprin (Uranus and Neptune)
9 3x5 index cards |
Affix each of the planets to a 3x5 card and label it. The moon
should be placed on the Earth's card and positioned about 2½ inches
from the Earth.
I measure my pace at about 26 inches. Using that as a reference
we'll build our model. I should mention that our model is going to
be over a half mile wide from the sun to Pluto. Place your sun
(basketball. This is the center of your solar system. Using the
following table step off the required number of paces and place
each of your planets.
| Paces |
Planet |
| 33 |
Mercury |
| 13 |
Venus |
| 11 |
Earth |
| 21 |
Mars |
| 145 |
Jupiter |
| 170 |
Saturn |
| 379 |
Uranus |
| 427 |
Neptune |
| 370 |
Pluto |
There it is—Your very own scale model of the solar system. Since
leaving the sun you've stepped off 1,569 paces, or about six tenths
of a mile. Everything in your model is to scale (about 1:5.8
billion). Can you see the sun from Pluto? Can you see it with
binoculars? If you wanted to add Alpha Centauri to your scale model
you'd need another basketball. Assuming that your sun is in
Seattle, you'd need to put Alpha Centauri (your second basketball)
in London, England!
To find your cache (which is about the size of the sun) you'll
need to do a quick calculation. How many paces, in your model, is
it from Earth to Mars? That's A. How many of the bodies in
the model are represented by grains of salt? That's B. How
many paces is it from the sun to Mercury? That's C. Finally,
how many of the planets in the model are represented by coins?
That's D.
To find the correct minutes of latitude make the
following calculation and add the result to the posted
value.
To find the correct minutes of longitude make the
following calculation and add the result to the posted
value.
To verify your final coordinates use my Puzzle Cache Verifier.
If you are a Geocacher in the state of
Washington, please join the Washington State Geocaching
Association. This is a great way to get the most out of Geocaching
in our region.
Simply go to geocachingwa.org for
details! | |