If the World Were Really Tiny

[Jim of Seattle]

Questions from Madi today. She's been home all day with a cold:

If I were like this huge giant, 500,000 miles long, and had the Earth right in front of me, and it were therefore equivalent to the size of a basketball, and I reached out to touch it, what would it feel like? Would it be easy to squish? Would it feel wet where the oceans were? How heavy would it be? Would it be OK to touch, but then if I pushed too hard and broke the crust, would it then be super hot because of lava? If I touched on the ocean, would I be able to see tiny tsunamis? Would it be possible to poke myself if I touched the CN Tower in Toronto?

[erik]

When your daughter turns into a 500,000 mile tall giant, what is she standing on? A turtle? Is it turtles all the way down? Do the turtles get bigger as you go down? Like how they make the big cheerleaders be on the bottom of the pyramid? Is it a turtle pyramid? Doesn't that seem more stable? Wouldn't an intelligent designer create a stable form for the universe, like a infinitely large triangular matrix of turtles, as opposed to a single-file, Jenga-esque tower of turtles? If we are created in God's image, does that mean God looks like a turtle? Or a 500,000 mile tall giant? You gonna eat that pickle?

[jack]

the world is really tiny.

[Caravan Ray]

Questions from Madi today. She's been home all day with a cold:

If I were like this huge giant, 500,000 miles long, and had the Earth right in front of me, and it were therefore equivalent to the size of a basketball, and I reached out to touch it, what would it feel like? Would it be easy to squish? Would it feel wet where the oceans were? How heavy would it be? Would it be OK to touch, but then if I pushed too hard and broke the crust, would it then be super hot because of lava? If I touched on the ocean, would I be able to see tiny tsunamis? Would it be possible to poke myself if I touched the CN Tower in Toronto?

If the giant was 500,000 mile long - then the earth would actually be about the size of a small marble - or since the earth is mainly iron - a ball-bearing about the size of a chickpea. It would probably feel like a Jaffa* that's been lightly trodden on then left out in the sun for a while ie. the coating would be all cracked and if you squeezed it you would get runny stuff on your fingers. (*do you know what a Jaffa is? Maybe a round Smartie or M&M or whatever you call them)

But I'm more concerned about this giant. Is this a basically humanoid giant? What sort of organ is pumping blood though something some 800,000 km* high? Imagining the size of the veins and arteries of this thing - there would be enormous turbulent flow problems. And because of the lack of sufficient surface tension - the capillaries in the extremities would need some sort of corking to stop blood squirting out everywhere.

(*just a suggestion - try to get your daughter to cogitate in metric in future - I know it's too late for your generation, but don't condemn your offspring to international ridicule too)

[frankie big face]

the world is really tiny.

that's what i was going to say!

[Jim of Seattle]

Surface tension definitely comes into play here. Liquid would appear to behave very differently if you were that big, (or if you were really small too).

Heat would also behave very differently. When the Earth's crust is miles thick, it makes sense to us that the center is molten iron, but the surface is cool, but if the world were that tiny, I have trouble imagining the crust to be a millimeter thick with lava on the other side but still being able to feel cool to the touch.

800,000 km was just a number thrown out. In her imagination it was the size of a basketball. So it's more like 80,000.

Perhaps the giant wouldn't be standing on actual turtle, perhaps there is some sort of stable building material that is called a "turtle" because it looks sort of like one, so if you went to the Giant's Home Depot, you could by these things called Turtles that were actually made of concrete (or a heavy plastic if you wanted to save a little money). They would specifically be available for giants who needed to hold onto worlds.

[Märk]

Taking into account particle physics here, if a creature were 500,000 miles tall, the sheer gravitational force it exerted would not allow it to hold the earth, or even get very close to it; the earth would fly into its center of mass and splat like a bug.

[Steve Durand]

Let's do a few calculations.

first the basic data, I'm gong to round off to make it easier.

The earth is 8,000 miles/ 12,800 km in diameter
The earth's atmosphere is nominally 50 miles/80 km thick
The ocean, at it's deepest point, is about 7 miles/11 km deep
The earth's crust varies from almost 0 to a max of 43 mils/70km thick under the Himlayas. The average thickness is about 19 miles/30 km

A basketball is about 9"/23 cm im diameter

So if we convert the earth numbers to basketball numbers we get.

Atmosphere .06" or 1.4 mm
Ocean .008" or .2 mm
Crust .02" or .5mm

So your basketball would have a thin sheen of wetness in places and if you tried to pick it up your fingers would probably break through the crust and you would get hot sticky stuff all over your fingers.

Steve

[Leaf]

So your basketball would have a thin sheen of wetness in places and if you tried to pick it up your fingers would probably break through the crust and you would get hot sticky stuff all over your fingers.

Steve

Sounds like fun.

[Jim of Seattle]

Let's do a few calculations.

first the basic data, I'm gong to round off to make it easier.

The earth is 8,000 miles/ 12,800 km in diameter
The earth's atmosphere is nominally 50 miles/80 km thick
The ocean, at it's deepest point, is about 7 miles/11 km deep
The earth's crust varies from almost 0 to a max of 43 mils/70km thick under the Himlayas. The average thickness is about 19 miles/30 km

A basketball is about 9"/23 cm im diameter

So if we convert the earth numbers to basketball numbers we get.

Atmosphere .06" or 1.4 mm
Ocean .008" or .2 mm
Crust .02" or .5mm

So your basketball would have a thin sheen of wetness in places and if you tried to pick it up your fingers would probably break through the crust and you would get hot sticky stuff all over your fingers.

Steve

Add to your calculations the mountains which would also be fractions of a mm thick, and the Earth would also be smoother and rounder than a billiard ball. Very smooth, slightly wet, very heavy (solid iron), hot liquid center.

Also very delicate. If you touched it even slightly, you create chain reactions all over the place. Sounds fun.

Someone should take all these calculations and create a computer simulation of Earth and the player would be the 80,000 km giant, and you'd have a toolbar with all kinds of tools like sticks and balls and fingers and stuff that you could use to poke at it. Then you could watch what happens. And you could zoom in to human scale and actually see mountains tumbling and lavas engulfing cities and stuff.

I'd like to see what it would look like if you were on Earth and the giant's finger pressed right where you were, but you wouldn't get killed because you would be safe in the groove of the giant's fingerprint.

[Adam!]

Taking into account particle physics here, if a creature were 500,000 miles tall, the sheer gravitational force it exerted would not allow it to hold the earth, or even get very close to it; the earth would fly into its center of mass and splat like a bug.

Nah. If you were 500,000 miles tall you'd be about 2000 times more massive than the earth, making it about the size and weight of a Cadbury egg (relatively speaking, of course). The acceleration you would apply on the earth at an "arms length" of 200,000 miles would be very small indeed: if you "dropped" the earth you would have time to go watch a Lord of the Rings movie before it smashed into your chest at a top speed best measured in inches-per-hour (relative, relative, relative). Yeah, gravity ain't a particularly impressive force.

Feel free to check my math, someone, because I tossed it off really quickly. If it's wrong I doubt it'll be by more than a factor of 10.

[Märk]

Oh, how surprising, Mr. Pedant-y Pants decides to chime in.

You do realise this discussion is about a giant who's a half-million miles big playing with the earth, right? I think any science that gets brought up is exempt from careful scrutiny. Just saying.

[Adam!]

Oh, how surprising, Mr. Pedant-y Pants decides to chime in.

Heh. I'm not out to sink your battleship, Sven; I just saw your post and thought "Hey, a math problem. I love math. Frodo!".

You do realise this discussion is about a giant who's a half-million miles big playing with the earth, right? I think any science that gets brought up is exempt from careful scrutiny.

In that case I will just scrutinize fantasy and misconception.

[Jim of Seattle]

Girls, girls. Play nice.

[Adam!]

Girls, girls. Play nice.

Read my last line with a cocky smile. If there was an emoticon of a smiley face and a penis, or just a smiling penis, I would have used it. Where's Bortwein when you need him?

[Leaf]

"I'm not out to sink your battleship" is the best line I've read on here in a while.


Please continue to love math in my presence. It always amazes me that you find PLEASURE in math.


weirdo.

heh heh.

[Me$$iah]

if the world was like really tiny then where would all the yardsticks be made???

[the Jazz]

While we're being pedantic, shouldn't this thread be named "If Madi Were Really Big"?

[blue]

if the world were reeeeeally tiny...
























canada would still be insignifigant.

[Märk]

hahaha blue fell off his toilet!

[Caravan Ray]

I've been thinking a lot about this giant's penis.

Assuming some sort of similitude beween this giant and earthbound humans - this sucker's packing something tens of thousands of kilometers long down his trousers. It would be like being in the USA and having a knob-end on the other side of the Atlantic (and I'm not talking about Johnny Cashpoint).

There is no way any sort of conventional hydraulic mechanism is keeping that baby up. Is there a Mrs Giant? Is she concerned that the old man is spending all his time standing on turtles fondling planets? Probably not I'd reckon.

Have I just lowered the tone of this thread?

[stueym]

Have I just lowered the tone of this thread?

No more than is normal for you as an Aussie sexual deviant sheep *****er

[edited in case this thread is being read by said small girl!]