From the pdf:
After the Sun, the closest star to us is a small Red Dwarf star, Proxima Centauri. It is too faint to be seen without using a sizeable telescope. It is 4.24 light years away, so in our model, which is 1:1 billion scale, it is 40,140 kilometres away. This is approximately the distance around the circumference of the world from Melbourne to Melbourne.
That’s extremely nerdy, I love it.
Very cool other facts in that PDF as well.
This is one of my favourite things!
I’ve walked most of it (though I couldn’t find Saturn for some reason … I suspect it was stolen).
And yea … it’s a ridiculously effective demonstration of how hard it is to comprehend big numbers. I knew these numbers, or had read them before hand, and thought about them … but seeing it all to scale was kinda devastating … like the distances between the outer planets are huuuge … you get tired walking them even though the planets are 5cms wide.
And yea, the proxima centauri thing is a very nice touch!
