The Planets Are Very, Very, Very Far Away: A Journey Through the Amazing Scale of the Solar System

by Mike Vago

Overview

The solar system unfolds before your eyes in this cheeky, myth-busting book (grounded in real math)!

Quick: Picture the solar system. Do you see nine planets on tidy rings around the Sun? Then you have been lied to!

It’s not without reason: We have to draw the solar system that way to fit it on a place mat, or a lunch box, or into an ordinary book. But that familiar diagram is wrong about almost everything—and so this is no ordinary book. Seven double-gatefold pages open out not once but twice, capturing our planetary neighbors at scale.

At a 100,000,000,000-to-1 scale, the Sun is about the size of a dime. And five feet away from the Sun, we find . . . Earth, the size of a pinhead. A hundred-billion-to-one scale is not nearly small enough to fit our solar system into a book (or onto a soccer field)! How small do we need to go? Unfold the next three spreads to find out . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781615197774
Publisher:	The Experiment
Publication date:	10/18/2022
Pages:	54
Sales rank:	658,144
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 10.20(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Mike Vago is the creator of the bestselling The Miniature Book of Miniature Golf. He’s a graphic designer and a regular contributor to The A.V. Club. He tells people he lives in New York, but he actually lives in New Jersey.

Editorial Reviews

05/09/2022

In this spatially oriented primer, Vago invites readers to comprehend the solar system’s vastness. Colloquial, conversational narration uses tongue-in-cheek humor to point out that the planets do not match the neat circular orbits that textbooks depict (“IT IS A LIE. The planets DO NOT all hang out together”). Gatefolds, plus an accessible discussion of scale using the metric system, clarify cosmic distances. While adeptly scaling the solar system down to fit within these pages, the author scales the planets up so they appear as tiny specks on mostly black backgrounds. A final bit of scaling collapses the Milky Way, employing a 10 sextillion–to-one scale to convey interstellar distances. En route to a note about “Goldilocks worlds,” this volume also includes statistics about the four terrestrial planets and the four gas giants, and an intriguing blurb for each about “how we might live there one day” (for Earth: “We already live here”; for Jupiter: “We won’t”). Sure to leave audiences feeling incredulous—and incredibly small. Ages 10–up. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Winner of the 2024 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books

"This short book uses multiple large pullout sections, six landscape pages wide, to illustrate the Solar System . . . a great way to show how vast and empty the Solar System is."

Science

"The Planets are Very Very Very Far Away is an excellent book. One that has a mission and 100% succeeds at completing it. If you’re looking to inspire your children to the wonders of the Solar System, this is an excellent and innovative way to do so."

GeekDad

"Finalist for the 2024 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books

This short book uses multiple large pullout sections, six landscape pages wide, to illustrate the Solar System . . . a great way to show how vast and empty the Solar System is."

Science

Finalist for the 2024 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books

“This short book uses multiple large pullout sections, six landscape pages wide, to illustrate the Solar System . . . a great way to show how vast and empty the Solar System is.”—Science

“Conversational narration uses tongue-in-cheek humor to point out that the planets do not match the neat circular orbits that textbooks depict. Gatefolds, plus an accessible discussion of scale using the metric system, clarify cosmic distances. . . . Sure to leave audiences feeling incredulous—and incredibly small.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“The Planets are Very Very Very Far Away is an excellent book. One that has a mission and 100% succeeds at completing it. If you’re looking to inspire your children to the wonders of the Solar System, this is an excellent and innovative way to do so.”—GeekDad

From the Publisher