Space is really big

The Earth as a Tennis Ball

Ever seen the movie Despicable Me? This movie features a shrink ray that Gru uses to shrink the moon. Let’s repeat this exercise.

Let’s start by first shrinking the Earth to the size of a Tennis Ball.

A tennis ball has a diameter of approximately 6.7 cm. The average diameter of the Earth is 12,750 km, so this equates to a reduction scale factor of around 190 million to one. Zap! Done!

If we wanted to reduce the moon to the same scale as our tennis-ball Earth, what size would it become? Applying the 190 million to 1 scaling to the moon’s diameter of 3,474 km, we get a new diameter of just 1.8 cm – the size of a marble!

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