Sara S
05-29-2009, 08:13 AM
from delanceyplace.com:
In today's excerpt - the emptiness of space,
the distances between planets and stars:
"To gain a richer sense of cosmic
proportions, we can paraphrase
William Blake, and see the Earth as a fine
grain of sand. The sun,
then, would be an orange-sized object twenty
feet away, while Jupiter,
the biggest planet of the solar system, would
be a pebble eighty-four
feet in the other direction - almost the
length of a basketball court -
and the outermost orbs of the solar system,
Neptune and Pluto, would
be larger and smaller grains, respectively,
found at a distance of two and
a quarter blocks from Granule Earth.
"Beyond that, the gaps between
scenic vistas become absurd, and it's best to
settle in for a nice, comfy
coma. Assuming our little orrery of a solar
system is tucked into a quiet
neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, you won't
reach the next stars -
the Alpha Centauri triple star system - until
somewhere just west of
Omaha, or the star after that until the
foothills of the Rockies. And in
between astronomical objects is lots and lots
of space, silky, sullen,
inky-dinky space, plenty of nothing, nulls
within voids. Just as the dominion of the
very small, the interior of the atom, is
composed almost
entirely of empty space, so, too, is the
kingdom of the heavens. Nature,
it seems, adores a vacuum.
" 'The universe is a pretty empty place, and
that's something most
people don't get' said Michael Brown of
Caltech. 'You go watch Star
Wars, and you see the heroes flying
through an asteroid belt, and they're
twisting and turning nonstop to avoid
colliding with asteroids.' In reality, he
said, when the Galileo spacecraft flew
through our solar system's
asteroid belt in the early 1990s, NASA spent
millions of dollars in a
manic effort to steer the ship close enough
to one of the rubble rocks to
take photos and maybe sample a bit of its
dust. 'And when they got
lucky and the spacecraft actually passed by
two asteroids, it was considered truly
amazing,' said Brown. 'For most of
Galileo's journey, there
was nothing. Nothing to see, nothing to take
pretty pictures of. And
we're talking about the solar system, which
is a fairly dense region of the
universe.'
"Don't be fooled by the gorgeous pictures of
dazzling pinwheel galaxies with sunnyside
bulges in their midsections, either. They,
too, are
mostly ghostly: the average separation
between stars is about 100,000
times greater than the distance between us
and the Sun. Yes, our Milky
Way has about 300 billion stars to its
credit, but those stars are dispersed across
a chasmic piece of property 100,000
light-years in diameter. That's roughly 6
trillion miles (the distance light travels in
a year)
multiplied by 100,000 ... miles wide. Even
using the shrunken
scale of a citrus sun lying just twenty feet
away from our sand-grain
Earth, crossing the galaxy would require a
trip of more than 24 million
miles."
Natalie Angier, The Canon, Houghton
Mifflin, Copyright 2007 by Natalie Angier,
pp. 81-82.
In today's excerpt - the emptiness of space,
the distances between planets and stars:
"To gain a richer sense of cosmic
proportions, we can paraphrase
William Blake, and see the Earth as a fine
grain of sand. The sun,
then, would be an orange-sized object twenty
feet away, while Jupiter,
the biggest planet of the solar system, would
be a pebble eighty-four
feet in the other direction - almost the
length of a basketball court -
and the outermost orbs of the solar system,
Neptune and Pluto, would
be larger and smaller grains, respectively,
found at a distance of two and
a quarter blocks from Granule Earth.
"Beyond that, the gaps between
scenic vistas become absurd, and it's best to
settle in for a nice, comfy
coma. Assuming our little orrery of a solar
system is tucked into a quiet
neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, you won't
reach the next stars -
the Alpha Centauri triple star system - until
somewhere just west of
Omaha, or the star after that until the
foothills of the Rockies. And in
between astronomical objects is lots and lots
of space, silky, sullen,
inky-dinky space, plenty of nothing, nulls
within voids. Just as the dominion of the
very small, the interior of the atom, is
composed almost
entirely of empty space, so, too, is the
kingdom of the heavens. Nature,
it seems, adores a vacuum.
" 'The universe is a pretty empty place, and
that's something most
people don't get' said Michael Brown of
Caltech. 'You go watch Star
Wars, and you see the heroes flying
through an asteroid belt, and they're
twisting and turning nonstop to avoid
colliding with asteroids.' In reality, he
said, when the Galileo spacecraft flew
through our solar system's
asteroid belt in the early 1990s, NASA spent
millions of dollars in a
manic effort to steer the ship close enough
to one of the rubble rocks to
take photos and maybe sample a bit of its
dust. 'And when they got
lucky and the spacecraft actually passed by
two asteroids, it was considered truly
amazing,' said Brown. 'For most of
Galileo's journey, there
was nothing. Nothing to see, nothing to take
pretty pictures of. And
we're talking about the solar system, which
is a fairly dense region of the
universe.'
"Don't be fooled by the gorgeous pictures of
dazzling pinwheel galaxies with sunnyside
bulges in their midsections, either. They,
too, are
mostly ghostly: the average separation
between stars is about 100,000
times greater than the distance between us
and the Sun. Yes, our Milky
Way has about 300 billion stars to its
credit, but those stars are dispersed across
a chasmic piece of property 100,000
light-years in diameter. That's roughly 6
trillion miles (the distance light travels in
a year)
multiplied by 100,000 ... miles wide. Even
using the shrunken
scale of a citrus sun lying just twenty feet
away from our sand-grain
Earth, crossing the galaxy would require a
trip of more than 24 million
miles."
Natalie Angier, The Canon, Houghton
Mifflin, Copyright 2007 by Natalie Angier,
pp. 81-82.