NEBULA
VOLUME 44 I ssue 2
PAGE 11
CYCLE THE SOLAR SYSTEM
by Kevin Taylor
The Sun (2.42 m diameter)
On the 29 th of May 2016, Vad,
Eva (aged 6), Nadine and I, went
on a bike ride down a disused part
of the old East Coast main-line
railway. The route (near York),
from Riccall to Bishopthorpe cov-
ers 6.4 miles. What’s special is
that spread along the route is a
scale model of our Solar System.
The planets along the route are in
scale (100 metres of track equals
57 million kilometres of space)
both in their relative sizes and dis-
tances from one another. This
equates to the speed of light to be
about 1.16 mph, making cycling
about 10 times light speed. This
scale would also put Alpha Cen-
tauri one and three quarter times
around the Earth away! One of
Alpha Centauri stars—Proxima
Centauri—has been in the recent
news with regards to a potentially
earth sized planet in the habitable
zone. All of these facts and more
can be found on the model’s web-
site, https://www.york.ac.uk/solar/
Shortly after leaving Pluto I
heard a POP-HISSssss noise from
the rear end of my bike. Of course
I didn’t really need to look to
know what had happened. Not be-
ing a very good scout, I wasn’t
prepared. Fortunately Vad had a
puncture repair kit with him (He
also offered to ride back to his car
and get a spare inner tube. In the
spirit of space travel I decided con-
tinue with what we had). The
puncture was caused by my tyre
being worn right through to the
inner-tube. Therefore, once re-
paired, I could only pump the tire
up with enough pressure to stop
the rims running on the track—
otherwise the inner-tube ballooned
out of the hole. I had to hope that it
lasted for the rest of the journey,
giving a little “Apollo 13” feel to
the ride!
One thing about the distance
scale that was really apparent (you
can look up the facts and figures,
but it doesn’t compare to the ex-
perience of leg power) was just
how far away Pluto was from the
rest of the planets. If it hadn’t been
for the incredible images from last
year’s New Horizons photos, one
could be forgiven for going along
with the new planetary definitions
to disqualify Pluto (hopefully this
will be reverted).
Route Map (by permission of Physics
Outreach, University of York)
Sometime after Uranus we came
across a large contraption on a
pole fitted with a satellite dish. A
sign read that it was a 1/3rd scale
model of the Cassini probe. We
Kevin, Vad and Eva with the Earth and Mo on on the cycleway