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It was not very long ago that I realized the outer bounds of our Oort cloud are actually closer to Alpha Centauri (4.25 light years away) than the sun. The sca
by alistairSH 5y ago
It was not very long ago that I realized the outer bounds of our Oort cloud are actually closer to Alpha Centauri (4.25 light years away) than the sun.
The scale of the universe never ceases to elicit feelings of existential dread.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoThe outer edges of the cloud seem to be at ~100K AU [0], while the α Centauri system is ~268K AU from us [1]. NASA also gives the same number [2] for the distance to the edge of the cloud. So, it looks like the Cloud extends almost halfway to α Centauri, but not that it's "closer to α Centauri than us"). As for the scale of the Universe: https://htwins.net/scale2/ https://htwins.net/scale2/ --- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud#/media/File:PIA17046_-_Voyager_1_Goes_Interstellar.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud#/media/File:PIA1704... [1]: https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/nearest_star_info.html https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/nearest_star_i... [2]: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/oort-cloud/overview/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/oort-cloud/overvie...
- alistairSH 5y agoHuh, the first paragraph of that same wikipedia says the cloud extends to 2000 AU. Either way, whenever I try to think about these things, I feel mild anxiety. Why am I here? What's the point of all this? I'M SO TINY! Aaaahhhhhhhhh! I probably need to lay off the sci-fi novels for a while.