I am a former nuclear engineer, I love science. I do not believe that science changes since God created it, but our understanding of science does change. It causes fights today, just as it did in the battle between the flat earth and round earth proponents. Christopher Columbus had a tough time getting his budget approved.
What many fail to understand is that the language of science is mathematics. Mathematics does not change, 2 + 2 is still 4, except in San Francisco and Harvard University. Mathematics proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the 2020 election was stolen regarding the President, the Senate and numerous House candidates. That is a discussion for another post.
While watching a show, my attention shifted to a commercial showing a well-intentioned grade-school teacher. Her task was how to show the kids the Solar System, so she created a model. She backlit spheres, hung them from the ceiling and let the kids view the display on their ZOOM apps. It was impressive and no doubt, the grade school kids were impressed. It gave them their first impression of the Solar System.
Funny, but I can never recall upgrading that image of the solar system as I advanced through school. How big is big?
Today, many lose any reference as to the vastness and magnitude of the Solar System. Many get caught up in the climate change is a man-made tragedy. But man can change the world if we act now. For only $8.3 trillion dollars, we can reduce the temperature of the earth by less than 1-degree Celsius over the next 40-years! If we do not act immediately, goodbye to life as we know it.
As a conservative, I believe we should conserve resources, we should not waste, we should treat our earth with respect. I also believe that it is unwise to rush into complicated situations, especially when we cannot define the parameters of the proposed problem. As far as climate change, I believe the Sun is the problem. Yet, with the image of those grade-school Solar Systems, it is a hard sell.
So, let’s make a scale model of the Solar System. A scale means that there is a ratio between the model and the real thing. Perhaps you have a ratio of 1:37, meaning that 1” on the model is the equivalent of 37” or possibly 37 feet or maybe 37 miles in real terms.
Here we go!
First, find a 2.5-foot diameter beach ball. Paint it bright orange. This is the Sun for now. It provides the measurement starting point.
Next, find a standard cat-eye marble which represents Mercury. Place it 242’ from the Sun. A squash ball makes an excellent Venus when placed 558’ from our Sun.
Earth is special. Take a Ping-Pong ball and cover it with blue paint. Add in some brown landmass and then lightly add white clouds to about 60% of the surface area. When it is dry, place it 775’ from the Sun.
Mars is a little larger than a cats-eyed marble. Find another marble and place it a quarter mile away.
Make sure your basketball is properly inflated. You can place Jupiter about a three-quarters of a mile from the Sun.
Saturn is more difficult. Use a volleyball. Then take a piece of strong cardboard and cut a circle about the diameter of a basketball. Cut an internal circle so that the volleyball fits snuggly and is split in half. Place Saturn about one and a third miles away.
Note: these planets should not be in a straight line from the Sun. Make sure they are staggered around the entire circumference of the Sun to make it more authentic.
Uranus and Neptune are simple softballs. Place Uranus just shy of three miles from the Sun. Neptune is four and a half miles from the Sun.
Now drive your mini-van back to the beach ball Sun. Throw the ball in the back of your van and leave the van, as its size is in proportion to the planets. An eight-foot diameter ball would make a better Sun.
Congratulations, you have made a Solar System to scale. Every foot of the distance represents 120,000 miles, which is about five trips around the equator of the earth.
The Sun is only 93,000,000 miles away. Light travels at 186,287 miles per second, so light from the Sun reaches the earth in about 9 minutes.
Everyone has heard of solar flares, a sudden explosion on the surface of the Sun. In 1999, a solar flare jumped out of the Sun some 35 times the diameter of the earth, or 280,000 miles. The column of power was over 140,000 miles in diameter. How big is big? Well, that flare was 17000 times larger than Earth. And the Sun is still growing, it gets closer to the Earth every day!
But many still believe man can destroy the planet. I am thinking the Sun has more power than humans. Because size matters! The sun can only hold 1.3 million earths! If a second of time was the earth, you could take a two-week vacation before the Sun was filled with seconds.
And the cost? A ream of paper is 500-pages and 2” thick. Paper has the same thickness as a one-dollar bill. Many elected “science” experts want to spend $8.3 trillion. We would need 16.6 billion reams of one-dollar bills.
If we looked at Washington’s face, the $8.3 trillion in dollar bills would go from the Space-X launch pad to around the moon and back to Florida.
Or, if we were paving a road with 12’ wide lanes, we could lay a 7-lane road from Boston to San Diego. And at someplace close to Little Italy, we could see 168 engravings of George Washington.
Contact your State and Federal Representatives and recommend that they understand the parameters of the issue, before they spend our money. And that they advise AOC that she cannot visit the Sun at night.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA
Love the article. As I’ve explained to many a moron, excuse, “environmentalist,” I am not one of them I am a conservationist. I believe natures resources (land, water, oil, coal) should be efficiently exploited for the benefit of man.
Do you want to end the threat of global warming, err climate change? Simply cut off the funding to these groups, universities, and government agencies. They will need too get real jobs.
I recall the wisdom of George Carlin. “The planet is just fine. The ***people*** are f%$#ed up!”
All the energy used by all of mankind in a full year (about 600 quads) is equivalent to the solar radiation that strikes the upper atmosphere in just one hour. The sun is kind of a big deal.
Your story takes me back before I had a clue what climate change was. One fun day, I forget which grade in elementary school it was, but the whole grade got to hop in school buses and take a ride to Nashville, to visit the Sudekum Planetarium. Talk about a place that could put a kid in awe! Do kids get to do those things, nowadays?
It’s surprising that money isn’t the language of science, nowadays. Thank God that political science didn’t jump into the argument. Give it time.
Great piece! Love seeing the numbers.
The last class I taught at USMA – a long time ago – was Research and Methodology for the Social Sciences. It began with word arguments for what we know and how do we know we know and ended with a multi-variate regression analysis.
If human-factored climate change were based on science there would be a mathematical statement of how it works which can be proven (or the null-thesis disproven) by rational empiricism.
So, where is that formula Y = ax1 + bx2 + nxN + e? What are the independent variables? Show and tell what one cubic of meter of carbon does – if that is the culprit. Then, of course, show how human production of carbon matters on a global scale, etc.
Where is the E = MC2?
Let’s play show and tell “scientists.”
Here’s a little more pointed out by a buddy on a politics chat…
When you generate power and convert it to electricity rather than to immediate mechanical work, you lose 40-60% right off the top. Using that electricity to charge a battery costs you another 10%, then using the battery for an electric motor costs you about 5% more–so you burn four times the fuel to do the same work.
Alternatively, those electric charging stations run on a 350kW diesel generator that burns 12 gallons per hour. It takes three hours to charge your little electric pregnant-rollerskate enough for 200 miles of travel. 3×12 = 36 gallons to go 200 miles… how is REDUCING fuel economy to about five and a half MPG “reducing emissions”?
Admittedly, if we had energy policymakers who had the brains of a stinking pile of dogplop and embraced nuclear and geothermal that would go a long way in making the math more favorable, but… this is where we are.