How Big is the Solar System, Really?

[@CuriousDroid]

🔒 Remove your personal information from the web at JoinDeleteMe.com/DROID and use code DROID for 20% off 🙌 DeleteMe international Plans: international.joindeleteme.com

[@InconsistentManner]

3 minutes of an advertisement for 8 minutes of content. the ratio is wrong. do better please.

[@PhilthySteel]

Their is spelt incorrectly at the end of the video . . .

[@Petertronic]

Yeah remove all your information, apart from your credit card numbers which they want from you LOL

[@WahrheitMachtFrei.]

The thought that it is statistically impossible for celestial bodies to collide when two galaxies collide is the most mind-blowing confirmation of the unimaginable distances involved.

[@mellonsymphonic8658]

any interesting source on the calculation you can recommend ?

[@dziban303]

​@@mellonsymphonic8658try mathematics

[@darktherapy]

@@mellonsymphonic8658Google.

[@dziban303]

​@@darktherapyNo! Do their research for them!

[@Heretic621]

One day we're going to collide with Andromeda...

[@darkhalf75]

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

[@AliHSyed]

42?

[@conor7154]

Incredible

[@edmer68]

Don't panic.

[@Plons0Nard]

Persephone, better known as Rupert.😊

[@Gary_Hun]

Easy to be so big, being mostly of nothing. My ass, now that is something.

[@Hiddensecret9]

When galaxies collide, it’s less like a smash and more like a gravitational waltz. Stars shift positions, new formations emerge, and black holes may eventually merge, but the vast distances keep most objects safe from direct collision.

[@glennbabic5954]

I love that image 1:00 of the planets lit from the opposite side to the Sun.

[@Sonnell]

Indeed. Most illustration about the solar system is terrible. I think educational youtubers should use scientifically correct ones, or always say when they are not.

[@badgerello]

*not to scale

[@colemin2]

​@@badgerelloIt looks like the object sizes are to scale but not the distances between them

[@Vile_Entity_3545]

It never ceases to amaze me that if you got in a car and sped towards the sun at 70mph without stopping, it would take 2 whole lifetimes to get there. It shows how colossal it is when you look up and see how big it is. You would think that driving away from the sun at 70mph for 152 years, it would be tiny in the sky. As I say it shows how colossal the thing is.

[@SaltyMeatHook]

76 isn't enough

[@MRblazedBEANS]

And only 3 mins at the speed of light. In space terms 70mph is soooo slow. Even going 10,000 miles a hour would be slow in terms of space.

[@JustinMShaw]

Another fun one is that if you were up in orbit around the Earth with our fully fueled best rocket and you used it up to accelerate straight towards the Sun, you still wouldn't hit it until after many, many passes around it.

[@pomodorino1766]

Thanks Paul! As always you put things in perspective in a very understandable way, without incorrect oversimplifications.

[@fisharmor]

I'll never understand why it's so difficult to say "Pluto was reclassified the same way Ceres was reclassified starting in the 1860s, because science is largely about the practice of drawing distinctions and Pluto, like Ceres, is different enough to be a distinct class of body".

[@dziban303]

Because many people didn't manage to outgrow childhood

[@mathieu6965]

I’d rather that we make Ceres a planet, not because it makes sense but because i love the name ceres and it be cool as a planet

[@sadwingsraging3044]

Cope harder. Pluto is a planet DESPITE what the Champagne Socialist say to justify their existence.😂

[@dziban303]

@@sadwingsraging3044 yeah someone is coping all right

[@jarretpaul]

@@mathieu6965 Don't forget Makemake, which I think is a very unusual name for a planet but I would like if it was.

[@wastingmymoneyonmotorcycles]

Love the space videos.! Thank you Paul.😉

[@Davidbirdman101]

You know, I was just wondering about this very thing. I was sitting here petting on my old cat and he looked at me and all of the sudden a thought flew into my brain and I said, "I wonder how big the solar system is?" And then I looked around and BOOM! there you were with the answer!

[@CapablePimento]

Wait…did your cat put that thought there? Because, if so….wow!

[@3800S1]

The outer boundaries of our system and theorised Oort cloud has always struck fascination and awe in me.

[@BigMobe]

3 light-years... we are never getting out of this system

[@28ebdh3udnav]

It's uncomprehendable. Just think, before the big bang, there was nothing, as far as we are aware. What if its so vast that our known galaxy is the size of a basketball, and 100 feet away, there's 20 or more basketballs of galaxies of their galaxies.

[@hugodesrosiers-plaisance3156]

I wonder, did the debate about the definition of planet consider the difference between a celestial body clearing its own orbit, and a celestial body having its orbit cleared by another body close-by?

[@Nerd_of_Anarchy]

Wouldn't a 4th rule about the equatorial plane of the star or something clear things up? Pluto is way off compared to the 8 planets. Not sure if any exo-systems are really weird but why not?

[@JustinMShaw]

Scientists tend to leave extensive records and arguments about pretty much all their decisions and conclusions like that. In this case it might be the transcripts of several meetings. Either way it's probably not the most exciting reading but you can probably find your answer.

[@simongeard4824]

If another close-by body has cleared your orbit for you, you can't really be said to have cleared your orbit, because the other body is still there influencing it. Also, strictly speaking, "cleared" isn't the right phrasing, because even Jupiter hasn't done that. More accurate to say that it _dominates_ it's orbit... e.g. everything sharing an orbit with Jupiter has basically been shepherded into various resonance points, e.g. the Greek and Trojan groups at L4 and L5 respectively.

[@yomogami4561]

thanks for the video it's always fascinating to see about the outskirts of our solar system

[@RickL_was_here]

11 minute video with a 2 minute ad.... Not cool.

[@E_y_a_l]

2 videos within 3 days.... Very cool.

[@BenjaminGoose]

The fact that the ad was in the middle was pretty gross.

[@dredeth]

@@BenjaminGoose you guys are not using ad blockers like since a decade and half ago...?

[@JacksonPhixesPhones]

I don't know why everybody's so mad about Pluto. A dwarf PLANET is still a PLANET. It's kind of in the name. It might not be in the club with the big chonky planets anymore, but now it has new friends, like Eris, Haumea, Ceres, Makemake, and many, MANY more. Just sayin'. 🙂

[@terrylandess6072]

If I was to be mad about anything, it would be they have nothing better to do than squabble over established knowledge and in the end it changed nothing.

[@screamingeagles2670]

Also being a dwarf planet makes Pluto cooler than lame normal planets

[@ivano8]

It's not everyone. Pretty much the only people that complain about are Americans.

[@JustinMShaw]

I liked the description that Pluto ceased to be the oddball runt of the solar system (wrong size, wrong type, wrong place), and was promoted to King of the Kuiper Belt.

[@slimdognotamillionare]

If planets have moons why are dwarf planets moons not called dwarf moons

[@ginamiller6015]

Curious Droid videos are always fantastic. Technical enough to satisfy the intellectual crowd but explained in plain language for the rest of us. Thanks for sharing what you do 🫶

[@brentgreeff1115]

The NASA video on orbital mechanics is one of my favs.

[@Ledshot]

I had a lecturer at Uni who was part of the council that demoted Pluto, he loved telling that story

[@workingguy-OU812]

Pluto matters.

[@perniciouspete4986]

So does Goofy!

[@sadwingsraging3044]

​@perniciouspete4986 Pluto is a planet. Always was and always will be despite the Champagne Socialist trying to justify their existence by having it "declassified".😂

[@reggiep75]

💀🔥

[@CapablePimento]

I care as much for Pluto as it cares for me.

[@StaK_1980]

It is always a treat to watch your videos. :-)

[@rob5944]

I often think how it all puts our tiny, tiny lifespans into perspective. Like it or not, we're only here for the briefest on instants.

[@Tom-hb4un]

Pluto will always be a planet to me.

[@andrewemery4272]

If Pluto is a planet, what is Goofy?

[@JustinMShaw]

To geologists too. They don't care about orbits, but if it's a geologically active body then they'll call it a planet. So many moons qualify too.

[@magecraft2]

Always wondered what came first the decision to demote Pluto or the rules to justify it :)

[@-_Nuke_-]

wow the final bit was mind blowing! so we and proxima centuri could even be "connected" if they also have an Oort cloud of themselves?

[@LeBurkaTron]

Great video. Thank you.

[@CalvinsWorldNews]

Even the "normal" stuff is extremely far apart. If the earth was a basketball, the moon would be a tennis ball about 30 feet away, and the sun would be 2½ miles away but a hundred feet tall. Jupiter would be 10 miles away. It's called "space" for a reason, it's just mostly empty.

[@wktodd]

I've been wanting to layout a scale solar system (just as far as neptune) for a while. I have a 300mm aluminium sphere (calibrator for scanning sonar) for the Sun and a set of small balls to represent planets. I just need the better part of a kilometre to lay it out :-)

[@davidswift9120]

My favourite channel!

[@wktodd]

It would be interesting to know how the average person perceives 'size' (what do they use as their personal yard-stick?) . People are usually surprised when i explain the scales of planets (compared to the 300mm ball that decorates my front lawn) . I know my mind was 'boggled' when I sat down to work out how to layout a scale solar system based on it.

[@Zapski]

You forgot that Ceres, and Juno were both named planets and were later demoted to being Asteroids. Ceres however was later promoted to a Dwarf Planet. I’m sure generations of people were absolutely crushed by Ceres’ demotion and elated by its later promotion

[@RockinRobbins13]

Yes, Ceres has been battered around even worse than Pluto. Oh, the humanity!

[@dwaynebrietzke]

Every time I watch a video about our solar system, or the galaxy, or the cosmos in general, I am reminded of how spectacularly small and tiny the human race is.

[@jakew2192]

Crazy fact: line up all the other planets in our solar system and they’ll all fit between the earth and the moon.

[@kenk8215]

When I read this I thought, "there is no way that's true". So I did the math and by gum you're right! Thanks for the interesting fact!

[@prilep5]

Thank you for the explanation and not waiting my time

[@TheStefmcd]

Excellent video.

[@KamilsView]

I command your commitment to the correct pronouciation of people's names. Well done, buddy.

[@augustinep6193]

Good. Thanks.

[@gpetheri]

Paul, can you do a video on the PROPER distances within the asteroid and Kuiper Belts, so we can get away from these ridiculous animations showing things a couple of meters apart!!!

[@sunnyjim1355]

These Data Protection adverts are getting pretty flashy these days...

[@50secs]

A silly question: If Neptune was discovered in 1846, why was there a God called Neptune?

[@50secs]

Sorry I should rephrase the question as: Wasn't Neptune the God based on a planet like Ares, Athena etc

[@RockinRobbins13]

Would you believe it was named after the planet?

[@50secs]

@@RockinRobbins13 would you believe Ares was named after Mars and Athena after Venus.

[@RockinRobbins13]

@@50secs Sure but the names of the mythological beings came before the star and planet names, of course.

[@50secs]

@@RockinRobbins13 planet Neptune was discovered in 1876, Ares was named after planet Mars in the era before the lord. Quite a lot of Roman Gods were named after celestial bodies, why would Neptune the God be without a planet?

[@Kenneth_James]

No Starship booster video? Surprising.

[@zlm001]

Thanks.

[@mukhtar__]

06:00 Immaneul Kant, but John can hahaha omg so funny

[@MundaneMuser]

The Sun really is the big boss of the solar system.

[@RockinRobbins13]

Over 97% of the mass of the entire solar system, no matter how large it turns out to be, is in the Sun.

[@forcivilizaton5021]

Our Solar system will grow so much bigger when we discover where planet 9 is. It has to be somewhere on the order of 15-18 thousands AU.

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

"Who knows what we may find in the future?" you ask. De Shadow do. Thank you for asking.

[@aldovalkovich755]

Fascinating😊

[@malyous]

I love the content, but a 2-minute ad in the middle of a short video is excessive. I'd suggest you at least include chapter markers, or an ad progress-bar, so we can easily skip to the end. Thank you for the videos anyway.

[@duran9664]

ur shirt burned my eyes 🔥😫

[@nokitanada7390]

Amazing!

[@loddude5706]

Third rock from the Sun . . . and lonely . . . HOW many suns?! . . . 'We're gonna need a faster ship.' : )

[@TheStuport]

Pluto will NEVER be a Dwarf Planet to me.

[@Brock_in_the_North]

Space is far too big for us to comprehend. We are nothing more than grains of sand in this universe, assume there is only one. I've always thought that if moons orbit planets, planets orbit stars, stars the center of the galaxy, Galaxies around whatever it is they orbit and so and on and so forth it's probably likely there is more than one universe. Who knows, maybe universes orbit something which orbits something else.

[@87you87tube]

So we thought we were a middle class city family with a tiny 30 AU backyard, but instead we were a wealthy hillbilly owning a 100,000 AU corn field?

[@Rennrogue]

Pluto has a far longer year, so it's had much less opportunity to clear it's orbit. It's capable though, so it should still be a planet. All five Dwarf Planets should get the same recognition of capability, and should be upgraded too because of the definition.

[@simongeard4824]

Hardly... remember that Pluto's orbit is so highly eccentric that at perihelion, it's actually closer to the sun than Neptune. So no, it's *not* capable of clearing it's orbit, unless you think it can out-muscle Neptune...

[@RockinRobbins13]

The term "cleared its orbit" hasn't been defined. We have an entire project of NASA, the Near Earth Object Study, to find and track asteroids whose orbits cross Earth's. So far, and we're nowhere near done, CNEOS the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, has found, as of October 30, 2024, 36,371 near Earth asteroids. Of them, 11,060 are larger than 140 meters in diameter. Has Earth "cleared its orbit?" Over 36 thousand asteroids say "NO!" All together now: DEMOTE EARTH! DEMOTE EARTH!

[@jackbrown8052]

If our solar system is at least 3 light years (9:15) in every direction that would mean that our solar system and the solar system of Alpha Centauri only 4.25 light years away are joined together. Assuming of course that Alpha Centauri's solar system extends out to a similar distance as our solar system does. If our sun's gravity can influence comets, asteroids and maybe planets 3 light years from the sun maybe Alpha Centauri's triple suns can somehow influence the same comets, asteroids and planets between the two solar systems?

[@JustinMShaw]

I'm pretty sure they didn't mean 3 light years in every direction. I think they just meant in some direction, and I think they made a point of emphasizing that it wouldn't be towards Alpha Centauri. If you use gravitational dominance as the boundary then it probably shifts as the stars move in different orbits.

[@JimCvit]

The solar system seems to be like my waist: it just gets bigger and bigger

[@Willrocs]

It is as big as the simulation lets it be

[@v8matey]

What if we are in a void in space an time is slower for us compared to the outside of the void?

[@Henchman1977]

2 videos in 3 days?

[@dominicdodd9759]

Mind: suitably boggled.

[@iamchillydogg]

We're ghosts trapped in meat sacks hurtling through the infinite void on a speck of dust.

[@EsperRanger]

Are you sure you have the right Oort? The one posted in the video is a living scholar of religion. The discoverer of the Oort cloud was Jan Oort en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Oort

[@richardsmith7721]

You are right, good spot. The guy in the picture was born in 1949, so he would have been around one year old when the Oort cloud theory was first proposed, so not even close. Love the channel but that seems like a rookie mistake.

[@simontay4851]

F**kin' enormous, thats how big.

[@Freedom4Ever420]

Uranus is my favorite

[@manuelkress8554]

So then there must be quite a bit of overlap between our solar system and Alpha Centauri, but how can the outer areas of the oort cloud stay in orbit around the sun?

[@Rom3_29]

Maybe Pluto, Ceres and its small moons were once one planet? Since they’re clumped together to orbit of Pluto’s epicenter so close? That large planet was causing irregular orbits on other planets. After what ever destroyed it. Other gas planets are still realigning into new orbits. If there’s Kuber belt with millions of asteroids . Would that make very difficult to know if object seen here. Is a distant star. Not an asteroid floating in Kuber belt? I might be blowing gas.

[@paranoiia8]

Pluto is a planet. As it's weird that dwarf moon is still a moon but darf planet is not a planet just because some guys in some group with crappy logo didn't had anything to do so they demoted pluto to show they did something...

[@ABrit-bt6ce]

"big enough to clear its own orbit" As the Earth has just picked up another rocky companion that shares our orbit that it obviously didn't clear, does that make the Earth not a planet?

[@Captain-Cardboard]

No.

[@theOrionsarms]

Clearing its orbit doesn't mean that no other body can be in the same orbit, only that the mass of larger body is bigger than the combined mass of all the smaller objects, Ceres didn't make that condition, but earth do.

[@MrJC1]

space is... scarily big. and do you know what is scarier about it? it keeps getting bigger. it makes you wonder if we do last long enough to get the tech to travel vast distances, will it be soon enough to actually get anywhere? because if it keeps getting bigger. I mean think about how fast these things planets and stars and stuff are flying. good grief. i wont be around to see it, thankfully. because the world then, well... it wont be what we grew up in. i already wanna get off this world asap sometimes. lol!

[@deathdoor]

Immanuel was robbed, he name should be "Kant Cloud"

[@oingpla]

It's only as big as we can discover.

[@lllPlatinumlll]

Objects too small and dark to see even with the most powerful telescopes... Who knows what we might find. Well, nothing, you just explained it.

[@JustinMShaw]

But we live in an era of rapidly developing bigger telescopes, so there's always hope that we may be able to see such things soon.

[@xliquidflames]

9:27 This graphic confused me. It has numbers on the line but doesn't say what they are. They can't be light years so are they AU? And is the graphic saying the Oort Cloud reaches almost to α-Centauri? It says the edge of the Oort Cloud is 100,000 AU away and AC+79 3888 is a million AU away. Then α-Centauri is equidistant from both the edge of the Oort Cloud and AC+79. So, the numbers and the scale are confusing. The Oort Cloud doesn't really extend almost to α-Centauri, does it?

[@bbirda1287]

It's logarithmic.

[@MrGaborseres]

Enjoy I did 😊 Thanks 👍

[@michaelclement1337]

We can see the oort cloud thru the comets that come from it and return to it, hence why we know it's there. I have wondered if it is possible with current technology to see an object in the oort cloud thru occultations?

[@BlueEyedColonizer]

I cant do it!!! I cannot hear Uranus and not chuckle in my head. I am a perpetual child....I know this......I cannot help it

[@patrickgallagher9069]

I wish KZbin would find a better way to get their advertising dollars than make every KZbinr sneak in an ad halfway through. Just make me watch them like on TV and skip the gimmicks. No offense. I love your channel. But the system has to change. It's obnoxious.

[@DouglasLippi]

Pretty Goddamn big then.

[@dsc4178]

Of course, shouldn't we find Oort clouds around other solr systems then?

[@thatguy5494]

Power scalers KZbinrs don't understand this

[@richardwilcox3643]

1:20 And thankfully now, we know for a fact that the earth is flat 😐

[@Gary_Hun]

Why is a nebula that makes the first stars, full of rocks?

[@Satire-Gaming]

It is at least 2 or 3 feet wide.

[@danahan01]

Were people just way smarter 150 years ago than they are now to figure this stuff out using the equipment of the period or what??

[@LouigiVerona]

The ads in these videos are getting longer and longer. I think about 25% of this video is a very long ad.

[@oodhamman]

The solar system is a mega structure created with its own sheld we can see out but no one can see in but they can fry into our space

[@PHDiaz-vv7yo]

Oye! Beltalowda!!!

[@kiwiPatchAz]

Lowell did find it first he just didn't know because it was so faint on the plate. They have it on display in Flagstaff and you can't see it without somone showing you.

[@TheLoxxxton]

Mmmm this just seems a bit lazy to be honest. A big portion being an advert😢

[@dexio85]

Had the same feeling. Almost the same effort went into the ad as the video. I guess money was running low.

[@RickL_was_here]

Yep. Just lost a sub. 2 minutes of an 11 minute video....

[@Phil_AKA_ThundyUK]

Big Bang 13bn years ago... observable universe 46bn light years...... I now think flat Earthers have a point.....

[@RealCadde]

Fabric of space. It stretches like your moms skin. And just like it, it doesn't rebound.

[@perniciouspete4986]

Space can travel faster than the speed of light. Really.

[@Phil_AKA_ThundyUK]

@@RealCadde I stretched my Mum's skin and it tore. Then I saw it was flat ... like THE EARTH!

[@StephenCole1916]

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 👍

[@40pike96]

Wow

[@deanspanos8210]

No giant elephants or turtle. 😭

[@iRossco]

Blink plates 29 Jan 1930 for planet X yet you then say 19 YEARS later 18 Feb 1930 it was discovered??

[@horuswasright]

It's avergae sized

[@TG_lightProductions]

wow. Just WOW \

[@jamiesuejeffery]

My field of study happens to be theology (For this comment it does not matter if you believe in a god, multiple gods, or no gods at all...please don't go down that path.). Theology tries to measure the unmeasurable. So I know what my tradition has said, what other traditions have said, and what I have experienced. I live in the United States and have traveled this vast continent from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean several times over my life. So I have a good concept of how far 3,00 miles is. I know that since I am not a trained athlete, I can walk about 10 miles a day. I prefer to only walk two miles a day. When we start talking about space, I know the moon is close, but have no concept of how close. I know that there is a possibility that Beetlejuice has already gone into supernova and we don't know it yet. Our solar system is bigger than I can conceive. I'll leave it up to the scientists to try to explain it to me, like when I learned how the easiest way to explain the weight of clouds in the sky...let's measure the weight of a small white fluffy cloud in elephants...this small one is about 5,000 elephants. Thank you space scientists!

[@madaro504]

nah. Too much inbuilt ads

[@elemar5]

That star that's next closest to our sun, what's it called Alpha what?