How Far Are The Nearest Stars?
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended whenever threads need an intuition for the vast distances between stars.
What it is
Cody's Lab builds a 200-billionth-scale model to show how far away the nearest stars are, using parallax and light speed. A short astronomy explainer on interstellar distances.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2019 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec 7373737373 · 2025-05 · on “Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart”
My favorite: Cody'sLab's "How far away are the nearest stars": [this video] Also gives an intuition for how incredibly bright stars shine
Recommends andrewstuart · 2019-10 · on “Humans will not 'migrate' to exoplanets, Nobel winner says”
Anyone who thinks we'll ever travel to another solar system really truly fails to understand the distances involved. The furthest humanity has ever travelled, by way of analogy, is a couple of millimeters - to the moon. The nearest star system relatively speaking is another 200 kilometers further. And sure you can appeal to the "well you never know what humans are capable of in the future" line of thinking, but that's really just star trek fantasy - there's not the remotest chance, nada, never. Here's a fun video that explains and will totally dismiss any idea that we'll ever get there - apart from Star Trek fantasy: [this video]
Recommends GuB-42 · 2021-03 · on “The Sweden Solar System”
Cody put a few solar system objects on a stadium, with distances to scale, the sun is represented by a pea. He then proceeds to drive cross country to put on the closest stars. [this video]
Recommends andrewstuart · 2023-01 · on “'Oumuamua: An analysis of the debate regarding the first interstellar visitor”
I believe in aliens from a statistical standpoint. But I don't believe in interstellar travel at all. I don't think people grasp the distances between stars. The longest distance a human has traveled through space is to the moon. If, for scale, this was about 2 millimeters, then the nearest star would be another 200 kilometers/124 miles away. Here's a great video to illustrate [this video] IMO Oumuamua was a rock.
Recommends andrewstuart · 2023-06 · on “Rubio Says He’s Heard Shocking ‘Firsthand’ Accounts of UFOs”
There's no aliens anywhere near earth. There really aren't. Given the staggering, likely impossible task of traveling between the stars, it's essentially impossible that they'd turn up on a planet with this many people and be so in tune with our technology and media that they manage to stay out of sight entirely, except for some government secret Area 53 base or whatever. If you think that traveling between the stars is even remotely practical then maybe watch this video that illustrates the distance only to the closest star, let alone any further away: [this video]
Cites AareyBaba · 2019-10 · on “Our Dazzling Night Sky When the Milky Way Collides with Andromeda in 4B Years”
The stars will pass BY each other. The galaxies will pass THROUGH each other without collisions. There are many youtube videos that try to visualize the incomprehensible scale of space. Here is one just for our solar system [this video]