Edited 2018-09-26
I wanted to get an idea how freakishly large the Milky Way is. So I worked this out. Distances may be estimates but should be close enough for my purposes here.
I wanted to get an idea how freakishly large the Milky Way is. So I worked this out. Distances may be estimates but should be close enough for my purposes here.
The Milky Way has a diameter of about 100,000 light years (LY). And the solar system has a diameter of about 9.09 billion kilometers, or 0.000961 LY. You can already see the very large difference between the two: 10 to the ninth power, or a factor of one billion (1,000,000,000)
I had originally tried to liken the Milky Way to two American football fields, but after further consideration, it's just not big enough to truly express size here. I will revisit this.
Also, as a curiosity, a FIFA certified soccer/football field is about 110 yards long, so it's actually only a little bit bigger, so the numbers wouldn't be that far off.
I will post again when I have a better way of expressing the size.
I had originally tried to liken the Milky Way to two American football fields, but after further consideration, it's just not big enough to truly express size here. I will revisit this.
Also, as a curiosity, a FIFA certified soccer/football field is about 110 yards long, so it's actually only a little bit bigger, so the numbers wouldn't be that far off.
I will post again when I have a better way of expressing the size.
