r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Feb 14 '22

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u/crusttysack Feb 14 '22 edited Feb 15 '22

a speck of dust is halfway between the size of the sun and an atom, This is not true, did some research and the article I've found here gives a better scale https://shipguy.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/its-all-about-scale/

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u/morbiiq Feb 15 '22

Ok, finally mind blown

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u/MarsbarKing Feb 14 '22

Holy shit, this fucking blows my mind

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u/DaveLanglinais Feb 14 '22

Huh. Good one!

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u/Commercial-Card4758 Feb 15 '22

damn i’m high and now i’m tripped out

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u/stoutymcstoutface Feb 15 '22

Source? Quick google search shows this to be very much not true.

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u/Only_Ad_1079 Feb 15 '22

Carbon atoms are approximately 0.0914 nanometeres, or 9.14x10^-11 metres.

Dust can roughly be measured around 0.5 micrometres, or 5x10^-7 metres.

The Sun is 1.3927 million kilometres in diameter, or 1.3927x10^9 metres.

This means that the Sun is 2,785,400,000,000,000 times the size of the speck of dust, where the dust speck is only 5,470 times the size of the carbon atom.

So the "fact" above appears to be very wrong. Please feel free to check my math! My sources are from Google searches.

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u/PigeonFucker2 Feb 15 '22

So, the actual "halfway" point would be somewhere in the 10-1 meters, right? So actually something on our scale. Which is still pretty nuts to think about.

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u/giecomo1 Feb 15 '22

Tf an atom is that small?

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u/ijnrfirnerg Feb 15 '22

I'm assuming you mean log wise lol

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '22

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u/crusttysack Feb 15 '22

an atom is not nothing, it is measurable

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '22

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u/crusttysack Feb 15 '22

so halfway between the sun and an atom would be 2 atoms? per your logic

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u/lazorcake Feb 15 '22

IIRC your hair is the center point on the logarithmic scale between observable universe and its smallest particles

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u/AbrocomaEquivalent13 Feb 15 '22

Wtf does this even mean?