231k views
3 votes
I am trying to visualize how far away Proxima Centauri would be if an astronomical unit was scaled down to an inch. But I don’t know math please help

User Okram
by
8.5k points

1 Answer

4 votes

Answer:

Sure, I can help you with that visualization!

The distance from the Earth to the Sun is approximately 93 million miles, which is defined as one astronomical unit (AU). To scale it down to an inch, we need to convert the miles to inches.

1 mile is equivalent to 63,360 inches (since 1 mile = 5,280 feet and 1 foot = 12 inches).

So, if we scale down an astronomical unit (93 million miles) to an inch, we would have:

93 million miles * 63,360 inches/mile = 5.87928 billion inches.

Therefore, if one astronomical unit was scaled down to an inch, the distance to Proxima Centauri would be approximately 5.87928 billion inches.

It's worth noting that Proxima Centauri is the closest known star to our solar system, located about 4.22 light-years away. If you're looking to visualize the distance to Proxima Centauri, it might be more practical to use a different scale, as the number of inches would become impractically large.

ur welcome

User Superuserdo
by
7.8k points