On an ITTY-BITTY planet called Earth...

[TangoWhiskey]

This site is cool. It puts into clear perspective the 'speck' that our planet earth is. It really helped my kids to visualize it!

http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm

EDIT: HA! I just went to the MAIN page of this site (somebody sent me the url) and realized that it's off some UFO-crazed radio program... still, THIS specific page is cool.

 

[terzap]

That is pretty neat. Thanks for the link!

 

[fgcason]

Neat.

BUT that still makes humans feel like they're IMPORTANT. This planet, civilization, people, money and everything on it doesn't even qualify as totally irrelevant.

Try this:
http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/universe.html

 

[Pilawt]

Or you can make a scale model of the solar system, with Earth a ball the diameter of a 25-cent piece.

The moon is the size of a shirt button, 30 inches away.

The sun is nine feet in diameter, 968 feet away.

Mars would be about the size of a penny, at its closest about 500 feet away.

Use a soccer ball for Jupiter, and put it about a mile away from the quarter that represents Earth.

A baseball would work for Neptune, and it goes about 5.3 miles away.

The nearest star (other than the sun) is 48,000 miles away at that scale.

I'm not sure all that makes us any more or less important, but when you think about the interplanetary probes that have been sent up there, that's pretty good shootin'.

-- Pilawt