Those guys didn't invent the scale-model solar system!

The scale solar system constructed by Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh is the kind of thing that usually delights me no end.  Since an early age I have gained a huge amount of pleasure from imagining the mysteries of scale.  I remember an article I read somewhere that described the amount of space inside a hydrogen atom as equivalent to a cathedral.  A pinhead on the altar represents the nucleus and the electron is somewhere in the distant back pews.  These kinds of images are my cathedral, constructed by the effort of scientists over the past few centuries, some of whom developed their ideas despite severe persecution.  I hope that the model solar system made by these men has a similar effect on some people as did the various analogies for deep space and time to which I was exposed as a child.  I don’t think there can be too much reverence and wonder. 

       So why am I so grumpy?  It’s because I keep reading that this was the first scale model solar system.   Admittedly, when you dig deeper and find out that the artists now say it is the first “with orbits,” they may be technically correct, but it is far from the first such project.  I have personally seen other scale solar systems on the National Mall in Washington DC, USA, and on a bicycle path in York, England.  I’m sure there must be dozens of others, if not hundreds.  What is more, over the years, web authors, notably Exploratorium,  have posted instructions on how to make a scale solar system. 

         In 2001, members of Neighborhood Bike Works youth program, where I worked in Philadelphia, made a 1:500,000,000 scale solar system into a bike ride.  Like the solar system walk on DC’s Mall, it was an experience for participants that Overstreet and Gorosh’s creation can’t provide with a video.  We rode our bikes to Neptune.  Teenagers and pre-teens calculated the sizes, made scale models of the planets, and delivered them to locations in Philadelphia and its western suburbs via bicycle.  I dug up some pictures of that event.   

Model of Mars (about the size of a pea) held up in the former location of Comet Cafe on 41st Street in Philadelphia, summer 2001

Saturn at Mount Carmel Church community center on 58th Street

Thinking back to the effort put in by those West Philly kids made it sting to hear that these guys did it “first” in Nevada.  Our scale solar system was an interactive experience for its young creators.  It also provided food for thought to anyone in the city who was familiar with the locations in which we placed the planets.  I love the art of Burning Man and similar events, but when it comes down to it, I’m much more inspired by scale solar systems that plop the whole picture down in a familiar landscape that people can relate to.  I would also have been more impressed by Overstreet and Gorosh’s solar system if it hadn’t been hyped  as completely original.