How much is it?

1991/04/01 Martin Axpe, Iñaki Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Fisika

It's very easy to worry about what we don't see. Therefore, neither too small nor too large have been confused in our mind, unable to perceive its measures (or at least its proportions). And yet the Universe we live in is too big and too small is the brick to build it. Why not try to understand the measurements of the Universe? In a previous article (When did it happen? Elhuyar. As we exposed the time scale of Science and Technology (vol. 44), now we come to clarify the scale of measures.

Structure of the smallest

As we said then, everything around us (and of course our body) has a structure similar to the Russian dolls. The basic indivisible fractions are quark and electrons. Through this raw material all that is in the world is realized (except angels, unfortunately), as can be seen in Table 1.

Size of the smallest

How large are these parts of slaughterhouse? In Figure 1 their diameters appear (quark and molecules do not appear, because the first ones are not outside the protons and the second ones can be of different sizes), but surely we do not solve too much the problem, right? But let us think that the electron is the force. In this case the proton would have the size of the football field (even in height, eye! ), the nucleus would be a sphere like the bay of San Sebastian (in height like Mount Anboto) and the size of the atom would be equal to that of the Earth.

There is still something more surprising. If we put things in place, we would have to place the Donostian Bay in the center of the Earth, and then, except for some beans, it would only be empty to the surface. According to our thinking, matter is almost empty! If you have a globe on hand, take a look and it is worth seeing how much San Sebastian Bay is.

We take the last step to reach our size: if the atom were a ball by hand, humanity would be the size of the Earth. Can you imagine the owner of this eye?

Structure of the largest

We return to the game of Russian dolls. And it is that we live on Earth and this revolves around the Sun with other planets. This set is called the Solar System. But also the Sun, with 100,000 million stars, is part of a plate-shaped galaxy. This galaxy is called the French Way or the Milky Way. But galaxies also tend to unite, because our Milky Way and twenty other galaxies form a cluster called Local Group.

As you can guess, clusters are not alone either. They therefore form structures called superclusters. In particular, our Local Group is part of the Local Supercluster. The name of this structure is the Virgo Supercluster, in whose center is the gigantic Virgo cluster. Are there more associations? It is possible, but still the experts, despite finding some indication of some association with Centauro, are not sure. As a summary, see table 2.

Larger size

In astronomy the kilometers are not used, but the time of light that takes the light to go from one point to another. 3.A. In the table you can see the distances to the Sun.

But let's trim the Universe and suppose the Sun is a sphere of 1 m in diameter. Then the Earth would be a chickpea located 107 meters, the Moon a needle head located 27 cm from the Earth and another needle head located 4 km from Pluto. Think that the one meter sphere is attracting the head of the needle located 4 km away. And nothing in those four kilometers, except for several heads of needles, a lentil, two chickpeas, two ping-pong balls and two grapefruits. There are very few small things to be so big, you will think.

That's nothing. The closest star is the Alpha Centauri and looks at how far it is: If the sun were needle head, Alpha Centauri would be another needle head located 60 km away. Imagine that in 60 km there are no more than two heads of needles.

One more step: If the Camino de Leche had the size of the Earth, the Sun 0.02 mm. (less than the thickness of a hair).

And we'll finish with the last jump. Now let's imagine that the whole universe is the size of the Earth (again the globe can help us). In this case the Local Supercluster would be the size shown in figure 2, the Local Group would be located in Bilbao, in the church of San Antón de Esne-Bidea and on the bank of the house attached to the Sun. Their positions and sizes would be those shown in figures 3 and 4. On this scale the Sun would only measure 10-7 ^mm. This is why the proportion between the Solar System and the Milk Path appears earlier.

If someone wants to place these proportions in another well-known village, 3.B. You can use the table data.

Excessive failure

Not so many years ago, in 1828, the Church (Pius VII, approving a judgment of the Inquisition) recognized that the theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun is not contrary to the Bible. It was a blow to man's pride, but quite soft with what we just saw. And it is that, with the Universe almost empty, in this terrible vacuum we are the following and, in addition, the matter we see is practically empty in this article. If not, we are nothing, but we are a little less than it seems.