Cosmic Scale Comparisons
Discussions focus on visualizing and comparing the immense sizes, masses, volumes, and densities of celestial bodies like planets, stars, and the universe to Earth, the Moon, and everyday objects to convey astronomical scales.
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It’s at least bigger than the surface of the earth :)
One nice illustration of "space is really big" is a fact that if you take the cube with the side equal to the distance from the Sun to the nearest star and fill it with water, then the mass of this cube will be roughly equal to the mass of the whole visible Universe.
Well assuming the same density it's "only" 100 times bigger in linear dimensions. Doesn't sound quite as crazy...
No, not hundreds of times larger. Maybe ~5% larger.
Well since the mass of the Earth is ~ 5x10e24 seems we're still in the realm of possibility
Why would mass only a bit larger than 10m in diameter have so much gravitational pull?
About Earth sized, I think. A bit bigger if the soil is low on hot isotopes.
It's trying to put a size comparison so that our human minds can picture the scale. Earth is just a placeholder in this example. The author is inviting you to picture the the size of the planet. They could've just written the sizes in terms of 10^x , however that is not as human-friendly to envison.There is no need to be unkind towards the author here, maybe your point is that they could have done a better job at presenting the scale for the reader? How would you write
wish you could make the sun and planets size to actual scale :)
I wonder how big are those swirls compared to the size of earth