How big is space? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

Space is Big.

Really Big.

Okay, now that I’m done quoting Douglas Adams…

Let’s try an experiment. I don’t know where you’re from and whether you prefer American Football or Soccer, so let’s just say you have a football field (or pitch). At the very center of the football field, you put down a basketball. This is the sun. It’s actually a bit large for this scale (5.3 billion to 1) but it’ll do.

Now, assuming you have an average pace of about 2.5 feet, take 14 and half paces towards the end zone/line.

At that point, take out a typical push pin. Stick it in the ground. That’s Mercury, just about to scale.

Take another 12 and a half paces away from the “sun”. Drop a standard BB on the ground. That’s Venus.

Now, take another 11 paces, if this is an American football field, you should be on about the 19 yard line, on a soccer field, just outside the 18 yard box, and drop another BB on the ground, preferably a blue one. That’s Earth. about 4 inches away from it, put another push pin in the ground. That’s the moon. That’s as far as any human being has gotten from the Earth.

Now, head to the end line. Walk about three paces past it. Stick another pin in the ground. That’s Mars.

That’s the inner Solar System.

Now, this is where most average people are already sitting down and having a stiff drink. But let’s say you have access to an even bigger open space…

To put down Jupiter, you have to walk another 151 paces, that’s nearly one and a half more football fields, dropping a few grains of sand to stand in for the asteroid belt. When you get there you can drop a golf ball to represent the “king of the planets.”

Another 160 paces past that, and you can drop a marble. That’s Saturn.

Now that we’re about four football fields away from our Sun, get ready for the real scale to kick in, because we have to walk another 358 paces, or about three more football fields, to get to Uranus. Maybe use a small marble for that? It’s sort of between common object sizes. It’s not small, but it’s no Saturn…

Finally, walk to a total distance of 1118 paces from our sun, that’s 405 paces past Uranus. Drop a lonely little small marble out here. You’ve made it to Neptune.

Congratulations. You’ve hiked over half a mile, about 2800 feet from the sun. Now, take another 80 paces away from the “sun”. Turn around, and take a picture.

That’s where Voyager 1 was when it took the “Family Portrait” on February 14, 1990, around 3 billion miles from Earth. (Actually, you’d have to be hovering well above the ground, because Voyager 1 is traveling “up” out of the plane of the solar system. Also it was sort of to the side compared to the planets, rather than looking at them all as a string of dots straight away from it.)

Now. You may notice, that at this distance, you can’t even see the basketball, much less any of the planets. It really helps that stars “light up” to help us see them.

Now, turn around.

Start walking. Take 16,080,000 paces. Yeah, seriously. Take a brief break after you’ve gone about another 4000 paces. That’s where Voyager 1 is today. That’s the furthest that anything mankind has ever created has made it. Oh, and to put it in scale, as the fastest thing ever made by man, it took 40 years to get this far. You’re walking at a pace several times faster than the speed of light in our model.

Keep walking, you’ve still got 16,076,000 paces to go.

That’s a total of 3046.53 miles (about 4903 kilometers), so, if you started at the center of Aztec Stadium in San Diego, CA, you’ll need to go to just in front of the Nova Scotia Power Station on the Trans Canada Highway, just outside of Port Hastings, Nova Scotia. There, you can put down a tennis ball.

Congratulations, you’ve just reached our nearest neighbor star, Proxima Centauri. Of course, in space, there would be a lot less to see along the way.

A typical person could actually walk this in a little less than a year, without even trying too hard. In reality, the fastest spaceship we’ve ever sent to the stars (Voyager 1) would take around 80,000 years to make it to Proxima Centauri. And that’s if Proxima wasn’t also moving away from us at the moment, which it is.

Proxima Centauri is a little less than 4 light years away. That’s peanuts on the scale of space.

The Milky Way Galaxy (the one we live in) is 100,000 light years across. That’s 25,000 times bigger.

And the Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies, and those are separated by distances where the numbers really get big.

I think I have to go back to Douglas Adams.

You just won’t believe how amazingly, unbelievably big it really is.

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