How big is a scale model of distance to the next star?

[_lost_username_]

So, why haven't we met aliens yet?
 

Maybe it has less to do with scarcity of life in the galaxy as it does how huge the distance is between potential refuges for it.

In this video you'll see a scale model of distance between our sun (represented by a pea) to the next sun (also a pea). Spoiler: the person making the model had to drive more than 100 miles and across state lines for this model:

 

Edited January 19, 2021 by ZoomBubba

[wacky1980]

scarcity only works when you don't consider the fucking insanely large scale we're dealing with. and the distance barrier collapses once general relativity is broken, which we can assume will happen for us eventually so it's most definitely already happened elsewhere.  no, i'm a believer in dark forest theory myself.

[Poof]

202 km or 125 miles

[_lost_username_]

8 minutes ago, wacky1980 said:

scarcity only works when you don't consider the fucking insanely large scale we're dealing with. and the distance barrier collapses once general relativity is broken, which we can assume will happen for us eventually so it's most definitely already happened elsewhere.  no, i'm a believer in dark forest theory myself.

I'm not a believer in there being a hyper-advanced society that's learned to bypass E=mc2 yet. That's due to the universe still being relatively young. It took several starts and stops for a lifeform like humans to evolve and that's after several mass extinctions. On top of that our solar system is still relatively close to the beginning of the universe and probably on par with the older life-sustaining solar systems. We are probably in a group of civilizations that would fit as the "old ones" you see mentioned in sci-fi instead of a young civilization.

[Poof]

i want to add that shrinking our sun and its neighbor down to a pee and saying its 125 miles away doesnt help me imagine the scales any better

[scoobdog]

10 minutes ago, Poof said:

i want to add that shrinking our sun and its neighbor down to a pee and saying its 125 miles away doesnt help me imagine the scales any better

Santa Barbara to Disneyland is close at 111 miles.

[Poof]

Just now, scoobdog said:

Santa Barbara to Disneyland is close at 111 miles.

but when the sun is a pee what does that even mean

[scoobdog]

15 minutes ago, Poof said:

but when the sun is a pee what does that even mean

I guess if you're going by scale, it would be roughly the distance from you (not the planet, just you) to a similar sized person standing on the surface of Mars, depending on where in our respective orbits we are.

[Poof]

16 minutes ago, scoobdog said:

I guess if you're going by scale, it would be roughly the distance from you (not the planet, just you) to a similar sized person standing on the surface of Mars, depending on where in our respective orbits we are.

thats even more confusing

what helps me understand is if you told me that it would be a 46.2 billion hour flight on a commercial airliner if it could fly thru space or about 5 million years

[wacky1980]

10 minutes ago, Poof said:

thats even more confusing

what helps me understand is if you told me that it would be a 46.2 billion hour flight on a commercial airliner if it could fly thru space or about 5 million years

4.3 light years, or approx 25 trillion miles.
if you could travel as fast as a bullet (let's say around 1,500mph or 2x speed of sound), it would take around 2 million years to get there. 
if you could travel as fast as voyager 2 (currently traveling 35,000mph and ~11 billion miles away, which took 45 years), it would take around 80,000 more years to get there.

[wacky1980]

1 hour ago, ZoomBubba said:

I'm not a believer in there being a hyper-advanced society that's learned to bypass E=mc2 yet. That's due to the universe still being relatively young. It took several starts and stops for a lifeform like humans to evolve and that's after several mass extinctions. On top of that our solar system is still relatively close to the beginning of the universe and probably on par with the older life-sustaining solar systems. We are probably in a group of civilizations that would fit as the "old ones" you see mentioned in sci-fi instead of a young civilization.

again, you're dealing with probabilities on such a large scale that the chances we're the first species to advance into space (or even being near the front end of the intergalactic species line) is slim. even if this part implied we were early bloomers, the thought that some other species took just one start/stop cycle less to begin, puts them millions of years ahead of us. we'll crack relativity in <1000 years if we still exist.

[scoobdog]

1 hour ago, Poof said:

thats even more confusing

what helps me understand is if you told me that it would be a 46.2 billion hour flight on a commercial airliner if it could fly thru space or about 5 million years

Yeah, that starts getting even more confusing.

[RainyDayJizz#35]

1 hour ago, Poof said:

thats even more confusing

what helps me understand is if you told me that it would be a 46.2 billion hour flight on a commercial airliner if it could fly thru space or about 5 million years

I always found those analogies difficult to wrap my head around too, it always seems easier to understand small made big. Like enlarging an atom's nucleus to the size of a baseball or something and if you place it in the center of a football stadium the nearest electron would be in the parking lot. Or a human able to jump the height of a flea would be able to leap the empire state building. Or the amount an ant carries being the equivalent of you carrying around a Volkswagen. 

I don't remember those analogies exactly but they're close enough. When it comes to big things scientific notation was good enough for me to get it. 10^14 as compared to 10^6, it's a massive difference that's hard to wrap my head around in some terms but I know how huge the difference is looking at the two numbers.

Maybe if I knew how many peas could fit in the sun it would be easier to visualize.

[_lost_username_]

On 1/19/2021 at 1:41 PM, wacky1980 said:

again, you're dealing with probabilities on such a large scale that the chances we're the first species to advance into space (or even being near the front end of the intergalactic species line) is slim. even if this part implied we were early bloomers, the thought that some other species took just one start/stop cycle less to begin, puts them millions of years ahead of us. we'll crack relativity in <1000 years if we still exist.

I think we'll have a decent infrastructure for traveling, transporting and maybe even colonizing the inner planets and asteroid belt within 1,000 years or so. A system where travel between planets and asteroids can be done within minutes or hours instead of days. I'm saying 1,000 years because I don't see the political unity required for going beyond that being reached before that time. 

As far as the Outer planets and Kuiper Belt, I'd say we'd developed the infrastructure and energy generation required to colonize and exploit them within 10,000 years. This doesn't mean we haven't done anything interstellar, but we probably wouldn't be at a point where we can expend enough energy to work around the light barrier.

After 10,000 years, I figure we'll start creating outposts within Interstellar Space within 10 light years or so, working our way out. 

After that, it's hard to say. I figure we'll be something like Cylons at that point with synthetic bodies we can just download into. The mass of humanity may just prefer to spend its time in something like the cloud, taking a nap, waking up just for holidays.