1 00:00:00,600 --> 00:00:02,108 Where we left off on the last video, 2 00:00:02,108 --> 00:00:04,271 I think we're getting a reasonably good appreciation 3 00:00:04,271 --> 00:00:09,219 for how huge the Sun is especially relative to the Earth 4 00:00:09,219 --> 00:00:12,929 and how far the Earth is away from the Sun. 5 00:00:12,929 --> 00:00:16,289 And most of these diagrams that we see in science textbooks, 6 00:00:16,289 --> 00:00:17,869 they don't give justice... 7 00:00:17,869 --> 00:00:20,642 In fact, when I showed this Sun over here 8 00:00:20,642 --> 00:00:22,747 that was about 5 or 6 inches across, 9 00:00:22,747 --> 00:00:25,347 I said that the Earth would be this little speck, 10 00:00:25,347 --> 00:00:30,634 about 40 feet to the left or the right, 11 00:00:30,634 --> 00:00:34,490 or its orbit would have a radius of about 40 feet. 12 00:00:34,490 --> 00:00:36,383 So you wouldn't even notice it, 13 00:00:36,383 --> 00:00:38,487 if you were looking at this thing over here. 14 00:00:38,487 --> 00:00:41,809 It would be this little speck orbiting at this huge, huge distance. 15 00:00:41,809 --> 00:00:45,019 If you look at this Sun over here 16 00:00:45,019 --> 00:00:46,187 --if I were to draw the whole Sun-- 17 00:00:46,187 --> 00:00:49,646 it would have a diameter of about 20 inches. 18 00:00:49,646 --> 00:00:52,978 So in this situation, this Earth right here 19 00:00:52,978 --> 00:00:54,494 --this is drawn to scale-- 20 00:00:54,494 --> 00:00:57,175 this Earth would not be anywhere near this close, 21 00:00:57,175 --> 00:01:01,451 it would be about 200 feet that way, 22 00:01:01,451 --> 00:01:05,689 or about 60 or 70 meters. 23 00:01:05,689 --> 00:01:08,273 So if you could imagine, if the Sun was this size 24 00:01:08,273 --> 00:01:10,458 sitting on something like a football field, 25 00:01:10,458 --> 00:01:14,400 this little speck of an Earth, this little thing right here, 26 00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:17,861 would be sitting on the other 40 yard line, 27 00:01:17,861 --> 00:01:19,349 60 meters away. 28 00:01:19,349 --> 00:01:21,849 So huge, you wouldn't even notice it. 29 00:01:21,849 --> 00:01:23,606 You might notice this from a distance. 30 00:01:23,606 --> 00:01:25,530 But you wouldn't even see this thing over here. 31 00:01:25,530 --> 00:01:27,000 And the other planets are even further, 32 00:01:27,015 --> 00:01:28,058 well not all the other planets. 33 00:01:28,058 --> 00:01:29,874 Obviously you have Mercury, 34 00:01:29,874 --> 00:01:31,503 you have Mercury here. 35 00:01:31,503 --> 00:01:34,104 I think most of us are familiar with these, 36 00:01:34,104 --> 00:01:36,060 but I'll just list them in case. 37 00:01:36,060 --> 00:01:38,270 That's Mercury. This is Venus. 38 00:01:38,270 --> 00:01:39,726 Mercury is the smallest of the planets 39 00:01:39,726 --> 00:01:42,092 that is not debated whether it is a planet. 40 00:01:42,092 --> 00:01:44,323 Pluto is the smallest, but some people debate 41 00:01:44,323 --> 00:01:48,033 whether it's really a planet or kind of a large solar body 42 00:01:48,033 --> 00:01:50,333 or dwarf planet or one of those kind of things 43 00:01:50,333 --> 00:01:52,422 And then you have Venus, 44 00:01:52,422 --> 00:01:54,361 which is probably the closest in size to the Earth 45 00:01:54,361 --> 00:01:56,611 or it is the closest in size to the Earth 46 00:01:56,611 --> 00:02:01,057 and then you have Mars and then you have Jupiter. 47 00:02:01,057 --> 00:02:02,235 And just to give you a sense of 48 00:02:02,235 --> 00:02:04,185 once again how far these things are. 49 00:02:04,185 --> 00:02:06,104 If I were to go back to the analogy of 50 00:02:06,104 --> 00:02:08,302 this being the size of the Sun, 51 00:02:08,302 --> 00:02:11,388 then Jupiter is five times further than Earth. 52 00:02:11,388 --> 00:02:12,550 So this would be, 53 00:02:12,550 --> 00:02:15,427 if I were to actually do this scale distance, 54 00:02:15,427 --> 00:02:20,241 this would be 300 meters away. 55 00:02:20,241 --> 00:02:24,550 So if I had a nice big medicine-ball-sized Sun, 56 00:02:24,550 --> 00:02:26,049 or maybe a basketball-sized Sun-- 57 00:02:26,049 --> 00:02:27,324 a little bit bigger than a basketball 58 00:02:27,324 --> 00:02:28,594 as it looks on my screen. 59 00:02:28,594 --> 00:02:31,195 Then I would put this little thing 60 00:02:31,195 --> 00:02:33,330 that's smaller than a ping-pong ball, 61 00:02:33,330 --> 00:02:36,658 I would put this three football fields away. 62 00:02:36,658 --> 00:02:38,607 That's how far Jupiter is. 63 00:02:38,607 --> 00:02:41,008 And then Saturn's about twice as far as that. 64 00:02:41,008 --> 00:02:43,327 Saturn is about nine times the distance. 65 00:02:43,327 --> 00:02:45,261 Let me make that clear, 66 00:02:45,261 --> 00:02:49,316 the Earth is one astronomical unit away from the Sun, roughly. 67 00:02:49,316 --> 00:02:53,028 Its distance changes. It's not a perfectly circular orbit. 68 00:02:53,028 --> 00:02:58,307 Jupiter is approximately a little bit 5+ astronomical units, 69 00:02:58,307 --> 00:02:59,433 so a little bit more than 70 00:02:59,433 --> 00:03:02,035 5x the distance from the Sun to the Earth. 71 00:03:02,035 --> 00:03:06,933 And Saturn is approximately 9 astronomical units 72 00:03:06,933 --> 00:03:11,431 or 9x the distance from the Sun to the Earth. 73 00:03:11,431 --> 00:03:13,810 So once again this would be 9 football fields away. 74 00:03:13,810 --> 00:03:15,242 Or another way to think of it is 75 00:03:15,242 --> 00:03:16,918 that it's essentially a kilometer away, 76 00:03:16,918 --> 00:03:20,374 if we had kind of a medicine-ball-sized Sun. 77 00:03:20,374 --> 00:03:24,266 This little, smaller-than-a-ping-pong-ball Saturn 78 00:03:24,266 --> 00:03:26,474 would be a kilometer away. 79 00:03:26,474 --> 00:03:28,800 And I just want to really reiterate that, 80 00:03:28,800 --> 00:03:30,336 because you never kind of visuallize it that way. 81 00:03:30,336 --> 00:03:33,204 Just for the sake of being able to draw it on a page, 82 00:03:33,204 --> 00:03:36,301 you see diagrams that look like this 83 00:03:36,301 --> 00:03:37,559 and they really don't give you a sense of 84 00:03:37,559 --> 00:03:40,829 how small these planets are relative to the Sun 85 00:03:40,829 --> 00:03:45,964 and especially relative to their distances from the Sun. 86 00:03:45,964 --> 00:03:57,953 And after Saturn you have Uranus and then Neptune. 87 00:03:57,953 --> 00:03:59,996 And obviously these guys are even further. 88 00:03:59,996 --> 00:04:01,869 Just to give you a sense, you know, it's very easy 89 00:04:01,869 --> 00:04:07,513 to start talking about galaxies and the universe. 90 00:04:07,513 --> 00:04:09,815 But what I really just want to get, you konw, 91 00:04:09,815 --> 00:04:14,663 already we're talking about huge distances, huge scale. 92 00:04:14,663 --> 00:04:16,181 We already talk about that it would take a jet plane 93 00:04:16,181 --> 00:04:20,043 17 years to travel from the Earth to the Sun. 94 00:04:20,043 --> 00:04:21,447 Multiply that by five, 95 00:04:21,447 --> 00:04:23,953 that's about 100 years to go from Jupiter to the Sun. 96 00:04:23,953 --> 00:04:26,946 200 years to go from Saturn to the Sun. 97 00:04:26,946 --> 00:04:31,329 So you could have had Abraham Lincoln get into a jet plane, 98 00:04:31,329 --> 00:04:33,726 and he still wouldn't have got (if he left from Saturn), 99 00:04:33,726 --> 00:04:36,288 he still would not have got to the Sun. 100 00:04:36,288 --> 00:04:38,230 So these are huge, huge distances. 101 00:04:38,230 --> 00:04:40,298 But we're not done, with the solar system there. 102 00:04:40,298 --> 00:04:42,195 Just to give a sense of scale. 103 00:04:42,195 --> 00:04:46,468 So this is, this right here, that's the Sun 104 00:04:46,468 --> 00:04:48,963 and each of these planets is narrower than these orbits. 105 00:04:48,963 --> 00:04:50,175 So they just draw these orbits, 106 00:04:50,175 --> 00:04:51,450 but you wouldn't actually even see 107 00:04:51,450 --> 00:04:54,233 the actual planets here at this type of scale. 108 00:04:54,233 --> 00:04:56,782 but this is one astronomical unit right over here, 109 00:04:56,782 --> 00:04:59,460 the distance from the Sun to the Earth. 110 00:04:59,460 --> 00:05:02,568 Then you have Mars. Then you have the asteroid belt. 111 00:05:02,568 --> 00:05:06,639 There you have the asteroid belt, 112 00:05:06,639 --> 00:05:08,798 which also has some pretty big things in itself. 113 00:05:08,798 --> 00:05:09,684 It has these things 114 00:05:09,684 --> 00:05:12,424 that are kind of considered almost dwarf planets. 115 00:05:12,424 --> 00:05:14,263 Things like Ceres, you could look those kind of things up. 116 00:05:14,263 --> 00:05:16,545 And then you have Jupiter out here, 117 00:05:16,545 --> 00:05:18,666 and once again we said it would take about 100 years 118 00:05:18,666 --> 00:05:19,804 or roughly 100 years 119 00:05:19,804 --> 00:05:23,420 for a jet plane to get from Jupiter to the Sun. 120 00:05:23,420 --> 00:05:25,623 But even if you take this whole box here, 121 00:05:25,623 --> 00:05:27,312 which is a huge amount of distance, 122 00:05:27,312 --> 00:05:30,570 roughly about five astronomical units, 123 00:05:30,570 --> 00:05:32,619 It would take about 40 minutes 124 00:05:32,619 --> 00:05:37,216 for light to get from the Sun to Jupiter, 125 00:05:37,216 --> 00:05:39,996 So this is a huge, huge distance. 126 00:05:39,996 --> 00:05:41,590 Even this huge distance, 127 00:05:41,590 --> 00:05:46,787 we could put it into this little box right over here. 128 00:05:46,787 --> 00:05:51,460 So this whole box, this whole box, right over there, 129 00:05:51,460 --> 00:05:55,189 can be fit into this box, 130 00:05:55,189 --> 00:05:56,272 and you need to do that 131 00:05:56,272 --> 00:05:58,778 in order to appreciate the orbits of the outer planets. 132 00:05:58,778 --> 00:06:00,030 And so on this scale, 133 00:06:00,030 --> 00:06:03,654 the Earth and Venus and Mercury and Mars, 134 00:06:03,654 --> 00:06:05,592 their orbits look pretty much, 135 00:06:05,592 --> 00:06:07,489 You can't even differentiate them from the Sun. 136 00:06:07,489 --> 00:06:08,667 They look so close. 137 00:06:08,667 --> 00:06:10,469 They almost look like that they're part of the Sun, 138 00:06:10,469 --> 00:06:11,609 when you look at it on this scale. 139 00:06:11,609 --> 00:06:12,664 And then you have Nepp.. 140 00:06:12,664 --> 00:06:16,256 you have the outer planets Saturn, Uranus, Neptune 141 00:06:16,256 --> 00:06:18,331 and then you have a Kuiper belt. 142 00:06:18,331 --> 00:06:21,790 This is more asteroids, but these are kind of more frozen... 143 00:06:21,790 --> 00:06:23,467 You know when we think of ice, 144 00:06:23,467 --> 00:06:24,448 we always think of water ice. 145 00:06:24,448 --> 00:06:26,605 But if you are out here it's so cold, 146 00:06:26,605 --> 00:06:28,158 that it's relatively getting dark now 147 00:06:28,158 --> 00:06:29,535 because we're pretty far from the Sun, 148 00:06:29,535 --> 00:06:31,775 that things that we normally associate as gases 149 00:06:31,775 --> 00:06:34,059 are going to be in their solid form out here. 150 00:06:34,059 --> 00:06:36,165 So this isn't just rocky elements. 151 00:06:36,165 --> 00:06:38,270 This will also be things that you normally associate 152 00:06:38,270 --> 00:06:41,522 as gases like methane, frozen methane. 153 00:06:41,522 --> 00:06:42,612 But even here, we're not done. 154 00:06:42,612 --> 00:06:46,685 We're not even out of the solar system yet. 155 00:06:46,685 --> 00:06:49,762 And actually, just ot give you a sense of the scale, 156 00:06:49,762 --> 00:06:50,843 we're operating on right here. 157 00:06:50,843 --> 00:06:53,533 I have this chart right here from the voyager mission. 158 00:06:53,533 --> 00:06:55,604 So the voyager missions, Voyager 1 and 2, 159 00:06:55,604 --> 00:06:58,744 actually Voyager 2 left a little bit earlier, a month eariler, 160 00:06:58,744 --> 00:07:00,739 Voyager 1 was just travelling faster. 161 00:07:00,739 --> 00:07:05,238 They left about a year after I was born. 162 00:07:05,238 --> 00:07:06,676 And their current velocity, 163 00:07:06,676 --> 00:07:10,901 just to give you a sense of how fast Voyager 1, 164 00:07:10,901 --> 00:07:19,061 Voyager 1 right here is right now travelling at 61,000 km/hr. 165 00:07:19,061 --> 00:07:22,989 That's about 17 km/s. 166 00:07:22,989 --> 00:07:24,941 That's the size of a city every second. 167 00:07:24,941 --> 00:07:26,113 It's going that fast, 168 00:07:26,113 --> 00:07:30,773 that's at least in my mind unfathomably fast velocity. 169 00:07:30,773 --> 00:07:33,385 This thing has been travelling roughly that fast. 170 00:07:33,385 --> 00:07:35,536 Well you know it has been going around planets 171 00:07:35,536 --> 00:07:37,519 and gaining acceleration as it went around orbits. 172 00:07:37,519 --> 00:07:40,392 But for most of the time it's been going at a pretty fast speed. 173 00:07:40,392 --> 00:07:43,780 Just to translate it to people who don't relate to kilometers, 174 00:07:43,780 --> 00:07:48,218 that's about 38,000 miles/hr. 175 00:07:48,218 --> 00:07:51,771 So this huge, huge, unfathomably-fast speed, 176 00:07:51,771 --> 00:07:55,215 and it's been doing it since 1977. 177 00:07:55,215 --> 00:07:59,021 I was learning to walk, and when I was learning to walk 178 00:07:59,021 --> 00:08:01,249 it was travelling at this super fast speed 179 00:08:01,249 --> 00:08:05,600 and then when I was learning... 180 00:08:05,600 --> 00:08:06,463 I mean our whole lives when we're sleeping, everything. 181 00:08:06,463 --> 00:08:07,326 When we're eating, when I'm in elementary school, 182 00:08:07,326 --> 00:08:13,028 it's still rocketing out of the solar system at roughly the speed. 183 00:08:13,028 --> 00:08:14,318 Its velocity is changed. 184 00:08:14,318 --> 00:08:15,609 But especially once it got outside of the planets 185 00:08:15,609 --> 00:08:17,947 it has been roughly at this velocity. 186 00:08:17,947 --> 00:08:19,218 So it has just been rocketing out 187 00:08:19,218 --> 00:08:21,013 and I don't want to say only, 188 00:08:21,013 --> 00:08:23,702 but it has gotten this far. 189 00:08:23,702 --> 00:08:28,206 It has gotten about that far right there. 190 00:08:28,206 --> 00:08:31,980 It's about a 115 or 116 astronomical units. 191 00:08:31,980 --> 00:08:34,754 And to give a sense, there's 2 ways to think about this, 192 00:08:34,754 --> 00:08:37,426 one says "Like wow! That's really far." 193 00:08:37,426 --> 00:08:39,329 Because if you even know that even on this scale 194 00:08:39,329 --> 00:08:40,742 you can't even see Earth's orbit, 195 00:08:40,742 --> 00:08:43,272 so this looks like it's a pretty, pretty far distance. 196 00:08:43,272 --> 00:08:44,571 And just to give you a sense of 197 00:08:44,571 --> 00:08:47,745 how far 116 astronomical units are, 198 00:08:47,745 --> 00:08:51,814 if 2000 years ago, Jesus got on a plane. 199 00:08:51,814 --> 00:08:54,378 I actually cut and pasted a copy of Jesus 200 00:08:54,378 --> 00:08:55,928 for visualization purposes. 201 00:08:55,928 --> 00:08:59,892 But if He got on a jetliner at a 1,000 km/hr 202 00:08:59,892 --> 00:09:01,809 when straight in that direction, 203 00:09:01,809 --> 00:09:03,004 in the direction of the Voyager. 204 00:09:03,004 --> 00:09:07,136 The Voyager would only just know be catching up to Jesus. 205 00:09:07,136 --> 00:09:10,365 So this is a huge, huge, huge, huge distance 206 00:09:10,365 --> 00:09:12,749 and at the same time even though it's a huge distance, 207 00:09:12,749 --> 00:09:15,554 especially relative to the everything else we've talked about. 208 00:09:15,554 --> 00:09:18,531 Relative to just even the outer regions of the solar system. 209 00:09:18,531 --> 00:09:22,345 We are still talking in terms of a small scale. 210 00:09:22,345 --> 00:09:26,481 So that is how far Voyager is and just to give a sense on this scale, 211 00:09:26,481 --> 00:09:32,995 so this whole box over here can be contained in this box, 212 00:09:32,995 --> 00:09:34,022 and when you look at this box, 213 00:09:34,022 --> 00:09:38,990 Voyager is only gotten about that far. 214 00:09:38,990 --> 00:09:43,580 After travelling at this unbelievable velocity for over 30 years, 215 00:09:43,580 --> 00:09:45,794 for 33, for about 33 years, 216 00:09:45,794 --> 00:09:47,720 just to give you an idea of these other things, 217 00:09:47,720 --> 00:09:50,232 Sedna right here is one of the ... 218 00:09:50,232 --> 00:09:53,965 it's a reasonably large sized outer-solar-system object. 219 00:09:53,965 --> 00:09:56,533 It's one of the further-est objects 220 00:09:56,533 --> 00:09:58,321 that we know of in the solar system. 221 00:09:58,321 --> 00:10:01,135 And has this very eccentric orbit, so it gets, 222 00:10:01,135 --> 00:10:02,403 I don't want to say relatively close, 223 00:10:02,403 --> 00:10:05,189 but not unreasonably far away, 224 00:10:05,189 --> 00:10:09,118 but then it gets really far away from the Sun. 225 00:10:09,118 --> 00:10:10,836 So even Sedna's orbit, 226 00:10:10,836 --> 00:10:13,854 if I were to look at this whole box over here, 227 00:10:13,854 --> 00:10:17,321 can be contained right over here. 228 00:10:17,321 --> 00:10:18,538 So in this diagram right here, you couldn't even, 229 00:10:18,538 --> 00:10:20,535 you wouldn't even be able to see, 230 00:10:20,535 --> 00:10:21,686 it would be like a speck, 231 00:10:21,686 --> 00:10:28,333 how far Voyager has travelled in 33 years, at 38,000 miles/hr. 232 00:10:28,333 --> 00:10:33,367 You wouldn't even be able to notice, that distance. 233 00:10:33,367 --> 00:10:35,996 And even though you can't even notice that distance, 234 00:10:35,996 --> 00:10:37,683 we still have the Sun's influence. 235 00:10:37,683 --> 00:10:42,574 The gravitational pull is still attracting things to it, 236 00:10:42,574 --> 00:10:46,857 and this right here, we speculate is the Oort cloud, 237 00:10:46,857 --> 00:10:48,602 and this is where the comets originate from. 238 00:10:48,602 --> 00:10:50,644 This is just a bunch of frozen, you can almost view it 239 00:10:50,644 --> 00:10:54,611 as frozen gases and ice particles, things like that. 240 00:10:54,611 --> 00:10:55,616 But this is kind of, 241 00:10:55,616 --> 00:10:59,116 we're starting to get to outer regions of the solar system. 242 00:10:59,116 --> 00:11:08,018 This distance right here is about 50,000 astronomical units. 243 00:11:08,018 --> 00:11:09,219 And just to give you a scale, 244 00:11:09,219 --> 00:11:11,589 because you hear a lot about light years and all of that. 245 00:11:11,589 --> 00:11:15,328 Light years are about 63,000 astronomical units. 246 00:11:15,328 --> 00:11:19,206 So if you go a light year out from the Sun, 247 00:11:19,206 --> 00:11:22,656 then you will end up in the Oort cloud, 248 00:11:22,656 --> 00:11:24,868 the hypothesized Oort cloud. 249 00:11:24,868 --> 00:11:27,267 And just to give a sense of the scale, 250 00:11:27,267 --> 00:11:28,376 the Oort cloud is actually, 251 00:11:28,376 --> 00:11:30,313 you know most of the planets orbits 252 00:11:30,313 --> 00:11:32,095 are roughly in the same plane, 253 00:11:32,095 --> 00:11:35,012 but this right here is the orbits of the planets, 254 00:11:35,012 --> 00:11:36,947 and once again these lines are drawn too thick! 255 00:11:36,947 --> 00:11:38,913 They are just drawn the thinnest possible so that you can see them. 256 00:11:38,913 --> 00:11:40,489 But they are still drawn too thick. 257 00:11:40,489 --> 00:11:42,966 And this goes all the way to the Kuiper belt all of these over here, 258 00:11:42,966 --> 00:11:46,544 so all the way out to the Kuiper belt. 259 00:11:46,544 --> 00:11:48,433 All the way out to all of the major planets. 260 00:11:48,433 --> 00:11:53,192 This is Pluto's orbit right over here. 261 00:11:53,192 --> 00:11:57,708 This whole diagram is only sitting in, right over there. 262 00:11:57,708 --> 00:11:59,313 You can barely see it. 263 00:11:59,313 --> 00:12:00,919 That's this whole diagram, is just that dot in this. 264 00:12:00,919 --> 00:12:03,521 And then you can see the Oort cloud all around it. 265 00:12:03,521 --> 00:12:05,619 It's more of a spherical cloud, and we think it exists. 266 00:12:05,619 --> 00:12:08,837 Obviously it's hard to observe things at that distance. 267 00:12:08,837 --> 00:12:09,844 So hopefully that gives you 268 00:12:09,844 --> 00:12:12,958 a beginning sense of the scale of the solar system. 269 00:12:12,958 --> 00:12:14,608 And what's really going to blow your mind is that, 270 00:12:14,608 --> 00:12:16,458 if this hasn't blown your mind already is that 271 00:12:16,458 --> 00:12:19,638 this whole thing is going to start looking like a speck. 272 00:12:19,638 --> 00:12:22,593 When you even just start looking 273 00:12:22,593 --> 00:12:24,067 at the local area around our galaxy, 274 00:12:24,067 --> 00:12:25,542 Much less than the universe as a whole. 275 00:12:25,542 --> 00:12:27,099 Anyway I don't want to get .... 276 00:12:27,099 --> 99:59:59,999 Well anyway...This starts to get crazy.