Comments on: The scale of Saturn, redux

By: Emil Rivera-Thorsen

Emil Rivera-Thorsen — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 16:46:55 +0000

If the probe is far enough away (I don’t now if it is), the enceladus-or-saturn scale problem isn’t an issue, it’s the same scale. Maybe we can just pretend that?

By: Matt B.

Matt B. — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:40:06 +0000

I guess I’m the only one that understood that Colorado isn’t in the map. There’s a hole there to show Enceladus. Therefore, the scale of the map is meant to match the distance of Enceladus, not the distance of Saturn’s surface.

By: The universe is too big for our brains « Joy of Science

The universe is too big for our brains « Joy of Science — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:44:38 +0000

[...] Here is my next article for the New Indian Express. It talks about the scale of the universe. 550 words is just not enough to convey the scale. I hope I have done reasonable justice to the cosmos . Talking of sizes have a look at this picture. [...]

By: [seeking] Alien artifacts on Mars and the Moon! | Mucky's Lounge

[seeking] Alien artifacts on Mars and the Moon! | Mucky's Lounge — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:00:08 +0000

[...] 300,000 years, by the way, is a geologic nothing. We’ve only been human for 200,000 years or so (dinosaurs, by comparison, reined for 160 million years). We’ve only been farming for about 10,000 years. All of the art and culture and history and mythology with which we identify have only been around for half that time. If it’s all Greek to you, remember that the Greek language has only been with us for about 2% of our time on Earth. The universe may not care about such a pitiful span of time, but to us, it’s unimaginably long. And space is big. [...]

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:35:38 +0000

@17. devagueme : ” Too bad we can’t move there, polluting that atmosphere would be impossible. “

Not impossible, it’d just take a *lot* longer for any human pollution to become a significant (global -Saturnian) problem!

Of course, at its distance from our Sun you might think that Saturn could do with some greenhouse warming – but then again, it gets really hot down below the icy cloud tops with deep levels of heat and pressure inside Saturn’s superfluid mantle and core – if it still has one. (Some studies – click on my name – suggest gas giant cores may get eroded or corroded into nothingness. Applies there to Jupiter but can’t see why same wouldn’t be true here for Saturn also. From what I gather, gas giant cores are mysterious places indeed with little known for certain about them.) By “really hot”, I’d expect its millions of degrees & at pressures high enough to make hydrogen a metal. Pollute that if you can puny humans!

By: Jeffersonian

Jeffersonian — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:18:57 +0000

So damn cool.

The contig vs Saturn, baby!
I see that the blackened part of Colorado is approx equal to the amount of land that can be seen from, say, the top of Mt Evans (a little more) ; so that provides another scale.

By: theMark

theMark — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 08:32:01 +0000

@24: Wikipedia says it’s gaseous gasses over a sea of liquid gasses over some solid core, so wouldn’t you (as Roy Scheider already observed in an unrelated movie universe) “need a bigger boat?”

By: Marina

Marina — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 06:33:18 +0000

If I’m going to drive around Saturn, I’m going to need a faster car.

By: Rich Hofacker Jr

Rich Hofacker Jr — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 02:27:04 +0000

I’m glad someone pointed out that Alaska is part of the North American continent, in fact the continental plate continues all the way to the Irkutsk Mountains in Russia. The ‘CON’ in ‘CONUS’ could stand for the CONtiguous United States, meaning they sharing a common border; touching or are
next or together in sequence. The Contiguous states is a correct term for the lower 48. Of course, the ‘CON’ in ‘CONUS’ could have stood for continental even if it is incorrect many people use that term…

By: Daniel J. Andrews

Daniel J. Andrews — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:02:29 +0000

Thanks Ganzy, Techydad. It was the states in front of the rings that was confusing me. Techydad has a map comparison at the link he provides.

Also, there’s this one which shows the itself compared to Saturn.
http://www.universetoday.com/24161/saturn-compared-to-earth/

On the BBC show Sherlock there was a scene where they were in the planetarium and the narrator mentions a dozen Earths can fit into Jupiter. I started saying, “that’s not right…”, but was hushed by the people trying to watch…not that any plot dialogue was going on…someone was trying to kill someone so lots of inept fighting, especially from a former military man (I assume their stunt coordinator was away on a trip with their science advisor though).