A number of years ago, I was discussing the problems of space travel. My own feeling is that, because of the rule of light speed, substantial space travel can never become a reality as such. I decided to try to demonstrate this by reducing the distance between Pluto and the Sun to 20ft and then working out what other sizes would be on this scale. I chose 20ft because the room I was in at the time was about 20ft across.

I wrote this program to put the calculations onto a computer. It uses decimal numbers which aren't as graphic as fractions unfortunately. When a number is quoted as say 1.2E-12, that means that the decimal place needs to be moved twelve places to the left i.e. 0.0000000000012.

It is interesting though to look at. I didn't really know what sort of results I would get when I started. I was especially impressed in the size of the Sun on this scale.

When I first looked at the results, it seemed strange that, with the relative size of the Sun to Pluto, that the Sun could be perceived by Pluto as a bright star or even that the Sun could exert any gravitational influence over Pluto at all. The Sun is, in fact, a point of light against a dark background and it just goes to show how significant an influence gravity is in the universe.

A quick comparison of the actual size of Earth to Mars suggests that the dreamers who imagine that one day Earthlings will colonise that planet are rather fantastic. Great if you want to lose half your weight instantly though.

Stan Hardy, EUG #23

Stan Hardy