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A sense of scale
Aug. 31st, 2009 11:17 pmI just had a wonderful sense of connection just now... I was inflating yet another enormous beach ball, and thought of the double breathing technique described in Variable Star. It seemed really appropriate at the time... I often feel like I'm just about to drop my basket, and more often then I would have liked, that turned out to be true. And yet there still seems to be a way to keep going even after the worst has already happened, and I run out of worst case scenarios.
But the coolest thing, was having my mental map stretched out in two distinct ways. It turns out that I already own all the correctly sized beach balls to represent the gas giants. And the various balls and marbles needed for the rocky worlds, I already have too. So I've got the 8 most important worlds modeled, and I can finally settle down and characterize the really interesting bits- those kuiper belt objects and the worldlets orbiting the gas giants.
(and it's fun to feel my navigational center shift, away from earth orbit, somewhere between Jupiter and Sol. It's less dramatic than, say, the copernican troubles, but it's the same kind of feeling.)
Twenty years ago, I was stretching my mind to imagine the size of the planet that I'm (still) on. Now I'm stretching my mind to the scale of my solar system... I have to believe this represents a kind of progress.
I wasn't particularly trying very hard, to puzzle out his one particular scale. Eath as a peppercorn might be easier to remember, but I started out only caring about Luna, Mars, Earth. Varley has his 9 worlds, I have myself three. (four, counting Phobos.)
I found a marble big enough so that the smallest marble in the bin could represent Luna. The larger marble held 30 diameters away from the moon, got me lunar orbit. And 200 times that distance, got me the closest approach to mars. (scaled halfway between in diameter, of course.)
But the problem with that scale, was all the little places around Saturn and Jupiter, were just barely out of reach with the marlbe. I have to use little tiny ball bearings that don't look like anything. And the beads that are just a bit bigger, have so much character. So what if I double the size?
Here's what I figured out: if the Earth is scaled at 70 mm give or take, then it takes about 8 minutes to comfortable walk the scaled distance to the scaled sun. That's too good to pass up. So the sun is 8 meters, Mars is a 40 mm ping pong ball, and everything else falls into place.
My only lingering regret was giving up the real moon as a benchmark. Under the old scale, the real moon is about the right distance to represent Alpha Centauri. Now, it's closer to Wolf 359, a star I know nothing about.
(aw, poop. Now I'm confused. My new 70mm earth is over twice the size of my old earth marble, so the distance to Alpha Centauri should be farther away, not closer. Either I was wrong then, or I'm wrong now. Back the the chalkboard, as they say...)
Heh. I almost forgot the other way in which my mental map has been stretched. It was 20 years ago I wrapped my mind around the size of the planet, using a satellite photo of the Florida panhandle and an inflatable globe of the earth. But the beach ball that made me think of Variable Star, was one I originally got to represent Earth, 8 years ago when I was living in Bremerton. As lonely and forlorn as I was back then, I still had it together enough to hang on to my solar system map. And now that beach ball represents Jupiter instead.
20 years ago, 8 years ago, and this moment, all fill out three nice data points on a line. If I were more ambitious, I might try to predict a moment in the future where I'm trying to wrap my mind around the size of the local group. But I'll settle for scratching today on the wall, so I can look back on it later.
But the coolest thing, was having my mental map stretched out in two distinct ways. It turns out that I already own all the correctly sized beach balls to represent the gas giants. And the various balls and marbles needed for the rocky worlds, I already have too. So I've got the 8 most important worlds modeled, and I can finally settle down and characterize the really interesting bits- those kuiper belt objects and the worldlets orbiting the gas giants.
(and it's fun to feel my navigational center shift, away from earth orbit, somewhere between Jupiter and Sol. It's less dramatic than, say, the copernican troubles, but it's the same kind of feeling.)
Twenty years ago, I was stretching my mind to imagine the size of the planet that I'm (still) on. Now I'm stretching my mind to the scale of my solar system... I have to believe this represents a kind of progress.
I wasn't particularly trying very hard, to puzzle out his one particular scale. Eath as a peppercorn might be easier to remember, but I started out only caring about Luna, Mars, Earth. Varley has his 9 worlds, I have myself three. (four, counting Phobos.)
I found a marble big enough so that the smallest marble in the bin could represent Luna. The larger marble held 30 diameters away from the moon, got me lunar orbit. And 200 times that distance, got me the closest approach to mars. (scaled halfway between in diameter, of course.)
But the problem with that scale, was all the little places around Saturn and Jupiter, were just barely out of reach with the marlbe. I have to use little tiny ball bearings that don't look like anything. And the beads that are just a bit bigger, have so much character. So what if I double the size?
Here's what I figured out: if the Earth is scaled at 70 mm give or take, then it takes about 8 minutes to comfortable walk the scaled distance to the scaled sun. That's too good to pass up. So the sun is 8 meters, Mars is a 40 mm ping pong ball, and everything else falls into place.
My only lingering regret was giving up the real moon as a benchmark. Under the old scale, the real moon is about the right distance to represent Alpha Centauri. Now, it's closer to Wolf 359, a star I know nothing about.
(aw, poop. Now I'm confused. My new 70mm earth is over twice the size of my old earth marble, so the distance to Alpha Centauri should be farther away, not closer. Either I was wrong then, or I'm wrong now. Back the the chalkboard, as they say...)
Heh. I almost forgot the other way in which my mental map has been stretched. It was 20 years ago I wrapped my mind around the size of the planet, using a satellite photo of the Florida panhandle and an inflatable globe of the earth. But the beach ball that made me think of Variable Star, was one I originally got to represent Earth, 8 years ago when I was living in Bremerton. As lonely and forlorn as I was back then, I still had it together enough to hang on to my solar system map. And now that beach ball represents Jupiter instead.
20 years ago, 8 years ago, and this moment, all fill out three nice data points on a line. If I were more ambitious, I might try to predict a moment in the future where I'm trying to wrap my mind around the size of the local group. But I'll settle for scratching today on the wall, so I can look back on it later.
