Most of the models of the solar system you’ve seen are…greatly abbreviated. There is a lot of space between planets, and our solar system is…huge. The planets themselves are quite tiny.
This is what I learned/recalled from this visualization from Josh Worth, wherein one pixel is about 3475 km, the distance from New York to Las Vegas, or the diameter of the moon.
So when we say that Mercury is close to the sun, we’re only talking relatively. I had to scroll over 10 screen-widths from the sun to get there. And that’s a mere walk in the park by comparison.
The only problem with this visualization is that it’s impossible to see the entire thing in one view, so other than the idea that there’s a lot of distance between tiny objects, you still don’t get a clear perspective of how big the solar system is and where everything falls within it. But it makes one thing abundantly clear:
It’s not called “space” for nothing. Or rather it is. Lots and lots of nothing. Squared.
In other news, the New Horizons probe is nearing Pluto out there in the middle of all that enormous space. I saw a brief video of the project team celebrating their success. My first thought was “Huh. Looks like someone made sure they all read the memo about wearing non-descript shirts.” Because it doesn’t matter how smart you are, how successful the project is, or how many women made a contribution, but whether or not someone is wearing a shirt that might cause someone completely unrelated to the project to make an entirely unjustified, rash judgment about the person wearing that shirt, overshadowing the accomplishments of dozens–if not hundreds–of people.