Human Scale Universe Calculator
Space is incomprehensibly vast. But what if we shrunk it down? If the Sun was a basketball, Earth would be a small bead 26 metres away. This calculator scales the solar system (or any cosmic object) to sizes you can actually visualize. Choose a reference object for the Sun, and see where the planets would be at that scale.
How We Calculate This
Scale factor = reference size / Sun diameter (1,392,700 km). All distances and sizes multiplied by this factor. Real astronomical data from NASA.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is space so empty?
Even at the basketball scale, Earth is 26 metres from the Sun. Neptune would be about 780 metres away! The planets are tiny dots in a vast void. Most of our solar system is empty space.
How far would the nearest star be?
At basketball-Sun scale, Proxima Centauri would be about 6,800 kilometres away! That is roughly the distance from London to New York. And that is our nearest stellar neighbour.
Could you fit the solar system in a city?
At marble-Sun scale (1.5 cm), Neptune would be about 49 metres away, roughly fitting in a small park. But Pluto would extend further, and the Oort Cloud would be several kilometres away.
How big would a human be at these scales?
At basketball-Sun scale, a human would be about 0.3 nanometres tall, smaller than an atom. We are truly insignificant compared to cosmic scales.
Related Calculators
You might also find these calculators helpful: Space Travel Time, and Weight on Other Worlds.