Ask Ethan: What if the Sun were a grain of sand?

<p>From the perspective of a human being, it&rsquo;s almost impossible to fathom just how mind-bogglingly large the cosmic scales are. An average human is a little less than 2 meters in height, but planet Earth is more than 12,000 kilometers in diameter. The Sun is larger, at 1.4 million kilometers across, and incredibly far away: some 150 million kilometers distant. And these numbers, grand though they may seem, are paltry compared to what lies beyond our inner Solar System. Neptune is more than 4 billion kilometers away; the next-nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light-years (or ~40 trillion km) distant, while the Milky Way itself is more than 100,000 light-years across.</p> <p>All of that doesn&rsquo;t even take us beyond our own galaxy, to the trillions of others stretched across the observable Universe. Yes, it&rsquo;s incredibly hard to fathom, but what if we shrunk those scales down to something more familiar? That&rsquo;s the idea of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.patreon.com/startswithabang" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Patreon supporter</a>&nbsp;Pete Smoyer, who wants to know:</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-what-if-the-sun-were-a-grain-of-sand-d0b041c9c734"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>
Tags: GRAIN Sands