Ranges of sizes from subatomic particles to cosmic bodies are so vast as to make it impossible to imagine their scale directly. In order to make them more accessible, this page will use several scales, both large and tiny, as well as applying the same method to time scale of prehistoric events.

Mean diameter of Earth is 12,746 km (7,900 mi). Verrazano Narrows bridge, the largest suspension bridge in US has a central span of about 1,300 m (4,260 ft). If Verrazano was a toy bridge with a span of 50 cm, Earth would be a sphere with a diameter of 4.9 km, almost 5 km (3 mi), Everest height would be 3.4 meters, or 11.15 ft, which would still make it hard to climb. At this scale you can see easily that the highest mountain is actually very small compared to the size of Earth, and that Earth surface is relatively smooth for its size. Deepest point in oceans is about 11 km, which at this scale would make a 4.2 meter deep ridge - still deep enough to drown in, if it was wide enough, which is something I'm not sure about.

Illustration of a few heights above Earth ground level:

A train of 300 m length would be only 11 cm (about 4.2 in) long at this scale.

Average depth of pacific ocean is 4,300 m, or 1.65 m at our scale (5.4 ft). Since that averages across deepest ridges and shallower areas, in most parts of the ocean you would be able to hold your head above water. On 'toy' Earth, oceans would be just puddles. At widest point, Pacific Ocean would stretch about 7.6 km (~4.7 mi), you would be able to walk over most part of it and easily swim over ridges, assuming you can swim at all and that your size remained the same. Blue whales at 1.1 cm and biggest sharks at about third of a centimeter would pose no danger.

North America would extend about 3 km (1.9 mi) from east to west, making it relatively easy to run across in a few minutes, if you are in a good shape. Highest peak of Rocky mountains is 1.7 meters, much easier to climb over than Everest (not to mention that most of Rockies are much smaller).

Average depth of Atlantic ocean would be about 1.3 m (4.2 ft), and width 1.8 km, or 1.2 mi.

Greenland would extend 400 m from east to west. River Nile would be about 1 meter wide (about 3 ft) on average, making it easy to jump over (I was unable to track down its depth). Lake Baikal, the largest (by volume) lake in the world, would be about 31 m (101 ft) wide and 240 m (787 ft) long, and 50 cm (1.64 ft) deep in deepest place. Australia would extend about 1.5 km (0.95 mi) from East to West. France is about 320 (1024 ft) meters across, Switzerland - 92 meters (302 ft), Russia would be about 3 km (1.8 mi) wide, India - 670 m (~2,200 ft).

At the same scale, the moon would be 1.3 km (0.8 mi) in diameter, and it would orbit at about 154 km (95 mi) away. Therefore, the Moon is a little smaller than Australia, more than two times smaller than North America (if you compare with its diameter, not surface area).

Illustration of size of Moon compared to Earth and distance between them:

Jupiter would be 55 km (34 mi) in diameter, Sun - 545 km (338 mi).

Illustration of size of Sun and Earth (distance between them is of course not to scale):

Space is defined to start at 100 km above Earth surface, which means it's 38 m (125 ft) above Earth level at our scale. Alpinists experience trouble breathing in lower atmospheric pressure at height of largest mountains, i.e. Everest, about 8.5 km (5.27 mi), or 3.4 m (~11 ft) at our scale, and this is good news because you would be able to breathe easily on our "toy Earth", but you would not be able to build any buildings over one story, and even then you'd need to locate appartments not much higher than ground level.

Cruising altitude of airliners is usually around 10km, which gives us 3.8m (12.4 ft) at our scale. A Boeing 747 would be about 2.7 cm long, a bit over an inch, just like airplanes sold in toy stores.

Peregrine falcon is likely to be the fastest bird, diving at speed of up to 180mi/hr (290 km/hr). At our scale it would only move at 111m/hr or 3cm/sec. It would take it about half a minute to move one meter. Fastest Japanese trains move at around the same speed. Boeing speeds along at 1127 km/hr (~700 mi/hr). At our scale, it's rather slow at 12 cm/sec (4.7 in/sec), or a meter in about 8 seconds. Fastest plane goes at 980 m/s (3,214 ft/s), or 38 cm/sec (15in/sec), almost a meter in 2 seconds, much slower than some of the fastest insects. An airplane crashing in your palm would not cause any harm at all (unless it was carrying an atomic weapon).

Speed of sound would be 11 cm in a second, traveling one meter in about 10 seconds.

Shuttle speed would be about 3 m/s (9.7 ft/s), and it's size - a little bit over a centimeter (.4 in). The fastest measured speed of flying insect is that of a Desert Locust, at about 9 m/s (29.5 ft/s); this makes it three times faster than the shuttle, however it is also bigger than the shuttle. I was unable to find their size but it's probably around 2-3 inches at most, which gives it about the same speed relative to size; however, shuttle fans, I have to disappoint you: many other insects probably fly much faster than the Locust. It's just that Locust speed is easier to measure reliably.

International Space Station would fly at 136 meters (445 ft) from surface, at the same speed as the shuttle. You can see that it's much higher than airplanes are, although, as Earth itself has a diameter of 5 km, it's really rather close, relatively. Earth's orbital speed would be 11.6 m/s (38 ft/s) or 42 km/h (26 mi/h). Light speed would still be respectable 115 km/s (71mi/s), still instantaneous for all practical needs, except at astronomical distances; you can compare it to speed of sound at this scale, 11 cm a second, which reminds us just how much faster light is. Sun would be at 58,500 km distance, or at 36,269 mi, and its diameter would be 535 km (332 mi).

We need a different scale to look at the Moon, Earth and Solar system. Let's take the scale of one to 5 million. The Moon is 69 cm in diameter, Earth is 2.6 m.

Everest is only 1.8 mm in size - the size of a tiniest ant. Pacific ocean is 3.9 meters wide, difficult to jump over but possible, but at average depth of about a millimeter it's more like a film of water. Greenland is 20 cm, France is about the size of an average envelope, Switzerland - a little smaller than a lighter.

Jupiter is the size of a whale at 28.6 meters. Sun is the size of aircraft carrier - 283 meters. Officially, space would start at about 2 cm above the surface of Earth. Airplanes fly just barely above the surface at 2mm. A Boeing cruising at full speed would take 17 seconds to move just one millimeter, speed of sound would be about the same. Shuttle moves like a rather quick snail, covering a centimeter in 6 seconds. International Space Station flies at about the height of a cup above surface - 7 cm. Earth's orbital speed would impress any cane-wielding old lady at 6 mm/sec. Light flies around at an impressive 60 meters a second.

You could walk the distance to Sun in about a day without hurrying too much: 30.4 km. Earth would be quite heavy at 52 tons, it would tower above any but the highest human and if it were laid on a level surface you could even try rolling it around, even though it's rather too heavy for that. As far as that famous remark about using a lever to move the Earth is concerned - that would be, in fact, practical (again, given that it'd lie on a surface). The Moon would just be about the weight of a full-grown, heavy-set Gorilla at 601 kg, all in a sphere of 69 cm diameter, it would be possible to roll around even though the surface is not as level as that of Earth, but the weight is so much easier to manage.

Don't even try to roll Jupiter at 16,536 tons. For that matter, don't try to roll Sun either, at 17,313,400 tons.

Pollux star would be 2.3 km, and Arcturus would be 4.5 km diameter, Rigel would be 19.8 km and VV Cephei, the biggest one, 537 km.

Let's reduce the scale even more and assume the Sun to be 1 meter in diameter. Distance to Earth would be just a stone's throw away: 107 meters. Earth itself would be about the size of small marble, at 9 mm. Jupiter is the size of medium ball, at 10 cm, and 525 meters from the sun, a couple minutes running at full speed. Pluto, the farthest planet (which shouldn't even be called a planet, being smaller than the moon and many other satellites), is perhaps at 1 hours of jogging: 5.2 km. Alpha Centauri - 29,151 km, not that far if you have a very fast car with insulation against vacuum and -273 frost.

Antares would be a huge sphere of 510m diameter (remember, the sun is only 1 meter). Betelgeuse is even larger, at 650 meters, and VV Cephei, the champ, is 1.9 km.

If we change scales again and call solar system a marble, at 1 cm diameter, Alpha Centauri would be 55 meters away. Galactic center is still quite a bit off at 333 km.

"As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if the galaxy were reduced to 130 km (80 mi) in diameter, the solar system would be a mere 2 mm (0.08 in) in width." (Quoted from Wikipedia article on Milky Way).

If we imagine that 1cm marble is our Milky Way galaxy, then the size of known universe is 1.4 km.

On the other hand, small things are very small, indeed. In current theories of physics, the smallest possible distance is equal to the Planck number, 1.6 * 10 to -35 power meters. It is suggested that this is equal to the size of strings in string theory. If the size of a string was 1 mm, the 'next big thing' is the size of electron (at least, the upper limit), which would be about the same as distance from Sun to Pluto multiplied by 14. This is a much bigger jump than we have in macroworld, where there's always something slightly smaller or slightly bigger (slightly meaning one order of magnitude).

Actually, this isn't exactly right, because there isn't anything one order of magnitude less than size of whole Universe, but there's only one order of magnitude 'missing' there, while there are 17 of them from a string to electron, and it's worth noting that there are two names for small distances, yoctometre and zeptometre, standing for 10^-24 and 10^-21 metre respectively, that do not correspond to any object in their range. On the other hand, string theory is just a theory and objects at this scale or at close scales are impossible to observe directly, therefore all of these sizes are merely theoretical.

If we take the size of quark, or an electron, to be 1mm, the size of some of the smallest insects, then a proton would be the size of a large dog - 1 meter. Diameter of a hydrogen atom would then be 50 km, helium - 62 km. Covalent diameter of atom of Sulfur would be 200 km, and silver - 306 km. What does covalent mean? I don't know.

Here we'll have to change scales yet again, equalling the Sulfur atom diameter, 200 km, to 1 cm. Feature size of Intel chip would be 32 meters, length of a blue whale; but they improve these things so quickly I'm sure they already got it down to at least 25 meters by now. HIV Virus is even bigger at 45 meters - bigger than any animal that ever lived. Viruses range from 10 meters to 225 meters, about the range in the size from small sail ships to largest oil tankers. Diameter of a typical bacterium would be from 50 to 500 meters. Width of a strand of spider web is 350 meters, and 500 meter is the size of a typical droplet of water in fog or mist. 4 km is the average width of human hair, more than entire length of Golden Gates bridge. 25 km is the size of Amoeba and 50 km is one millimeter in normal scale.

Ranges of sizes from subatomic particles to cosmic distances are so vast as to make it impossible to compare them directly, by distance values. Instead, we could use the concept of orders of magnitudes to compare them to our daily world. An order of magnitude is a multiplication by ten, i.e. 1 meter is 2 orders of magnitude more than 1 centimeter, 1 km is 5 orders of magnitude more than 1 cm, and so forth.

Daily objects we deal with can range from 1 mm to 1 km, roughly. That makes 6 orders of magnitude. If we go up to moon size, that's another 3 orders of magnitude. If we go from Moon to Solar system, we'll have 6 orders of magnitude again. Going from Solar System to our Galaxy, Milky Way makes up 7 orders of magnitude. Comparing our galaxy to the size of Universe gives us 5 orders of magnitude. Take a note that even though diameter of Universe is not that much longer than that of Milky way (compared to other jumps in orders of magnitude), mass, number of stars and number of particles grow much faster, following the formula for volume of a sphere: 4/3*pi*r^3.

Let's go back down to microscopic world. Differences in scale between strings and electrons make up the most impressive jump of all, at 17 orders of magnitude. Electrons to hydrogen: 7 orders of magnitude. Hydrogen to bacteria: 3 orders. Bacteria to insects (1mm): again 3 orders.

If we take our daily environment as the middle range and add up everything above that, we'll get 21 orders of magnitude. Adding up all of microscopic ranges gives us 30 orders of magnitude, much larger than Cosmic range by a long shot. As you remember, the 'every day life' range is just 6 orders of magnitude, from a millimeter to a kilometer.

China	1,313 people - full (but small) stadium
India	1,095 people - full stadium, 200 people left for beer.
US	298 people - a crowd.
Russia	142 people
Germany	82 people
France and UK each	60 people - two large classes.
Canada	33 people - one class.
Iraq	27 people
Armenia	3 people.
Estonia	Just one guy.
Bahamas	A number of deserted islands.
World	6 and a half thousands, still a small stadium.

If one day was a million years..

Universe	Was born about 38 years ago, (experiencing mid-life crisis now).
Earth	Was born 12 1/2 years ago.
Simple 1-cell life	Appeared 10.4 years ago.
First oxygen producing bacterias	9.9 years ago
Oxygen catastrophe (explosive rise of oxygen levels)	6.8 years ago
First protists with nuclei	4.9 years ago
Green algae colonies	3.8 years ago
First multi-cell organisms	2.7 years ago
Possible "Snowball Earth" (Earth completely frozen)	2.3 years ago
Sponges, soft-jelly creatures	1.7 years ago
Cambrian explosion (Trilobites, Anomalocarids - large predators, fungi)	1.5 years ago
First green plants and fungi	1.3 years ago
First vascular plants, millipedes, jawed fishes	1.2 years ago
Trees, first insects, early sharks	1.1 years ago
Coal-forming coastal swamps	1 year ago
Flying insects, amphibians common and diverse, first reptiles	10 1/2 months ago
Beetles and flies	10 months ago
Permian-triassic extinction: 95% of life becomes extinct, including trilobites	8.5 months ago
Dinosaurs dominant on land, first mammals appear, many modern insects	8.4 months ago
Many diverse dinosaurs, first birds and lizards	6.6 months ago
Flowering plants, many new diverse dinosaurs appear, modern sharks, marsupials and placental mammals appear	4.8 months ago
First large mammals, extinction of dinosaurs	2.1 months ago
Primitive whales, first grasses	1.9 months ago
Horses, mastodons, apes	23 days ago
Australopitecines, intensification of ice age, dry and cold climate	5.3 days ago
Flourishing and extinction of many large mammals (Pleistocene megafauna), such as sabre-tooth tigers, cave bears, etc. Evolution of anatomically modern humans.	1.8 days ago
End of recent glaciation, rise of civilization.	16 minutes ago

While writing this page I mostly used Wikipedia to provide numbers, but in some cases I had to use Britannica and Google. This page would be much harder to make before the Internet. I used Vim to write HTML and Autocad, Photoshop and ImageReady to make the pictures. It took me 3-4 weeks because I kept getting distracted by fascinating Wikipedia pages I used as references.

In some ways results surprised me. I did not expect that orders of magnitude of strings and Planck distance are removed much farther from our scale than edges of Universe, this seems counter-intuitive considering how close they are to us in absolute terms.

However, I hoped this page would create a more "integrated" representation of scales in the Universe and our planet. As I was working I thought of making a program that would keep a database of all objects and scale all of them on the fly by setting any chosen object to any chosen size. I'm not inclined to make this program right now, but I might well do in the future, at the same time I hope that someone might do this before me.

I'm not that good at math and therefore I could have made some mistakes here. Please let me know if you spot one.

A very impressive and beautifully rendered comparison of Planets and some stars: The Size of Our World.

This site shows Size of Jupiter compared to Earth.

This site shows relative size and distance of Moon and Earth.

This site lists a Table of Orders of Magnitude (length)