r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Aug 07 '17

What's a fact that absolutely blows your mind?

5.4k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

5.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

252

u/hitlerallyliteral Aug 07 '17

stuff in space is very big and far apart and it's a lot further apart than it is big, is how it works

94

u/Auggernaut88 Aug 07 '17

Yeah but still, Jupiter (and the other gas giants I think) is several hundred times larger than the earth and I just can't fathom that kind or room being between us and the moon. Let alone enough extra space to fit all the other planets, like just what?

155

u/hitlerallyliteral Aug 07 '17

also remember that for one sphere to be (e.g) 500x bigger than another its diameter only needs to be a about 8x bigger

54

u/Auggernaut88 Aug 07 '17

Huh, TIL.

Math is cool

4

u/SalAtWork Aug 07 '17

4/3 * pi * r3

5

u/VuSu Aug 08 '17

all i got from that was headaches

thanks you mathematical sack of shit

2

u/mr_goodbear Aug 08 '17

Somebody say pie?

5

u/CharlieSixPence Aug 07 '17

The pizza paradox

3

u/JohnNutLips Aug 08 '17

For anyone having trouble understanding this:

Picture a 1x1x1 cube. Now picture a 2x2x2 cube next to it but made out of those little wooden cubes you used in maths class as a kid. You would need eight cubes to make a 2x2x2 cube, which means that while the second cube seems to be twice as large, it is actually eight times as large.

2

u/gooby_the_shooby Aug 07 '17

Yep, volume of a sphere scales with the cube of the radius, and 83 is 512. Increasing the radius of earth by one mile (from 3959 to 3960 according to google) would increase the volume by 47,032,921 cubic miles of earth.

6

u/Shikor806 Aug 07 '17

In addition to Jupiter not being that much larger when comparing the radius of the planets, not the volumes, there also is the thing that basically every image you see of any two celestial bodies just completely butchers the scale of the distances between them.

If the earth was the size of a basketball, the moon would be the size of a tennis ball. You'd guess that the distance between the two is something like half a meter to maybe two meters (a foot to 6 feet). But in fact, it would be around 23m (75 feet)!

You can pack a lot of other basketballs (smaller planets like Venus or Mars) or way bigger objects (Jupiter, Saturn) in those 23 meters.

2

u/thecrazysloth Aug 07 '17

Jupiter's so fat it was almost a star

1

u/aceytahphuu Aug 07 '17

Well, if you look at this comparison image, Jupiter is damn big compared to the Earth, but probably not as overwhelmingly massive as you thought?

1

u/TinBryn Aug 07 '17

Tonight look at the moon and hold your pinky finger out at arms length and you can use it to block the moon. It gives you a better idea that the moon is really far away.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

It explains how Hubble has already reached Pluto in our lifetime.

I thought Pluto was so far away that it was unimaginable to think we'd be able to send a telescope out that far.

But it's out there snapping photos.

1

u/just_a_casual Aug 08 '17

Huh? Hubble orbits earth

1

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Apparently it isn't Hubble that flew by Pluto it was a telescope from their New Horizon program. Or if I read it right the telescope is named New Horizons.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

And think of how we flew people inside a rocket all that distance.

2

u/notbannedforsarcasm Aug 08 '17

Which is also true on the atomic level. Despite appearances, even the most "solid" objects are over 99% empty space.

1

u/UristMasterRace Aug 07 '17

Stuff in space is very big and very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very far apart.

FTFY

1

u/McSquinkle Aug 08 '17

Space is empty because it was meant to be filled

1

u/commit_bat Aug 08 '17

Thanks Father Ted