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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30420 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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My Fermi estimate of (1) before looking at the answer:

  • Proxima Centauri is 4 light years away

  • Speed of light is 300 million meters

  • There are 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 seconds in a year

  • The Earth is roughly 20,000 km thick. idk how big the sun is but maybe 100x bigger (by length) so let's say 1 million km

  • A baseball is roughly 0.1 m

Therefore the scaled-down Proxima Centauri would be a distance away equal to

4 light years * # seconds per year / size of sun * size of baseball / meters per km


= 4 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 3e8 / 1e9 * 0.1 / 1000

= 3784 kilometers

I didn't do (2) because I didn't see it until after I looked at the answer for (1).

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