Anyone reading this will tell you that they’ve had to draw the solar system when they were younger. So what did we do? Just rings with tiny planets in them. But one question still remained: just how much empty space lay between planets?
A designer, Josh Worth, is all set to answer that question with a quirky page, titled “If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel: A Tediously Accurate Scale Model of the Solar System.”
Sure, there are some models that have been created to show actual distances, but we have the internet! And the internet is a wonderful thing. It gives people the freedom of space. To make a scale model of these distances, you need a lot of space. In other words, Josh needed a lot of space to show space.
Space jokes aside, the simple web page that he designed has a horizontal scrolling option. So anyone who goes to the page has to physically scroll through the planets. There’s a whole lot of empty space, and some witty comments in between. For those with less patience, the icons of the planets are on top of the page. So you just click, and the scale scrolls automatically to the desired planet. Even the sizes of the planets are accurate. So we start with the moon as just one pixel, and the other aspects are all in relation to the moon size.
This interactive design is all set to create better yet simple explanations for how big the solar system – and the universe – actually is. Check out the link to the site, below, and enjoy!