Web designer Troy Brophy, fascinated by how things scale, has created a nifty page demonstrating just how much space there is in space. The Solar System is a six million pixel-wide page (where each pixel=1000 km), with the Sun at the left and each planet in its appropriate orbit and at an approximately correct size (at least within 1000 km of correct). There are links at the top to allow a jump to each planet, a good thing since simply scrolling left to right makes finding planets rather difficult. If you'd like to see how the planets match up against each other without a lot of scrolling and jumping, there's a link to put them all on a single screen.
The page requires IE6 or Mozilla/Firefox; the super-wide tables apparently don't render properly in Safari or Opera.
Comments (1)
This is what I like about the idea of colonizing space: there's just so damn much of it. Don't get along with the neighbours? No problem. Just pick up and move somewhere else. There's lots of room for everyone.
Posted by Vince | February 18, 2005 8:15 AM
Posted on February 18, 2005 08:15