Creating a scale model of the solar system centered on the Las Vegas Sphere
Rose Peck
2025-08-25
My biofamily has a video call each Sunday to catch up with each other and keep in touch. We started it during the pandemic, but we've kept it going for the past five years. On our most recent call, my father mentioned an interesting idea he had: what if you built a scale model of the solar system, with the Las Vegas Sphere1 standing in for the Sun?
It's pretty big. [source]
Sphere has a diameter of 157 meters, though the bottom third is "sunk" into the ground, resulting in a total height of only 112 meters. This is quite large, especially in width, but still shorter than the tallest resort hotels in Las Vegas.
TODO: Graph of buildings
Sticking the sun in its place2 results in a solar system model roughly 8.8 million times smaller than the real deal3. As we start walking away from the Sphere, each of our strides carries us about 6.2km through space. That translates to an effective speed of roughly 44 million kilometers per hour, or 0.04c.
Even at this blistering speed, it's still going to be a long walk to our first destination.
Little Mercury, running laps around the sun. [source]
Walking south down the Las Vegas strip, we pass all the extravagant sights that I've heard about in movies but never actually seen. We pass casinos, the tiny Eiffel tower, and all the other glorious monuments to glorious overindulgence. After 90 minutes of walking, we reach the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign at the start of the strip. We've traveled about 4.5 kilometers of earth space, and 40 million kiometers of solar system space. We still haven't reached Mercury.
The strip really just... ends after the sign.
After passing the sign, all the glorious sights just kinda drop away. To our left is the Harry Reid International Airport. To our right is a largely unobstructed view of the Mojave. Is it strange that I find it prettier than the strip?4
After walking for another half hour, we finally reach our destination. 6.6 kilometers from the Sphere is a tiny parking lot with a Starbucks and a Chick-fil-a.
Beautiful, aren't they?
Mercury is chilling at the Starbucks table, enjoying a coffee. At this scale, Mercury is only about 55 centimeters (21 in) in diameter. That's about the width of a standard desktop computer monitor. You could probably fit Mercury in your refrigerator, if it were empty. Mercury is just about the perfect size for hugging. The Sun is on the scale of skyscrapers, and our little courier is small enough to hold in your hands. And it's so far away, that even walking at a measurable fraction of the speed of light, it still took us 2 hours to get there.
The solar system is big, man.
Can we swap to a faster mode of travel before we head to Venus? This is taking forever.
Good idea.
Hopping in the car, it only takes us about 12 minutes to drive back to the Sphere at the north end of the strip. Our average earth speed is about 44 kph (27mph), which puts our solar system speed at 392 million kph, or roughly 0.36c.5
After that quick jaunt, we hop on I-15 North and drive for 14 minutes to reach Venus. We're on the highway, but our average speed on this section is only about 63 kph (39 mph). Isn't traffic fun?
Our glamorous little sister! [source]
Here, 12.2km from the Sphere, the highway crosses over the Las Vegas Wash, a manmade stream that drains the city's excess water into Lake Mead. The concrete trough that makes up the stream is about 20m (66ft) wide. Venus, only about 1.36m (4ft 6in) in diameter, could roll down the middle with room to spare. Venus is about as wide as a loveseat.
If Venus actually were rolling down the stream, it would be rolling very slowly, only about 4mm every second.
That's slower than a snail!
By a lot too! Snails move at about 13mm per second. Lightning speeds by comparison!
The only home we've ever known. [source]
It's us!
That's right, it's us ♥
After a few more minutes of driving, 16.9km from the sphere, we reach home. We're right at the edge of Las Vegas proper, in a light industrial park at the edge of town. Here we can enjoy scenic views of the RWC Distribution Center, the Amazon Fulfillment Center, and a building for the "Honest Company"6.
Earth is only slightly bigger than Venus, about 1.44m (4ft 9in) in diameter. The Earth is about as long as a 4 seater dining table from IKEA. It would make a lovely centerpiece in a living room designed by insane people.
On this kitchen-table Earth, the city of Las Vegas would be about 3cm across. You could spot it with the naked eye if you knew where to look! The tiny Sphere on the miniature earth is about 17 microns across, thinner than most strands of hair and probably impossible to spot with the naked eye, even if it were lit up. We could recurse further, and see what a nested solar system model would look like, but the IAU banned nested solar system models back in 20187, so we'll have to stop here.
As we continue on the Interstate out of Las Vegas, we are able to accelerate up to proper highway speeds. On our way to Mars, we manage to hit 112 kph (70 mph). Our solar system speed ramps up to 998 million kph, or roughly 0.93c. We're almost as fast as the actual light coming from our actual sun! If we were willing to speed at 121 kph (76 mph), we'd reach the speed of light.
As we blast down the highway, we pass the last buildings on the edge of Las Vegas. We've got a few more scenic distributions centers, a Manheim Automobile Auction House, and the Las Vegas Motor speedway. Past the outskirts of the city, we can just about make out the Nellis Dunes on the horizon. After just 6 minutes of driving, 25.7km from the Sphere, we reach Mars.
Our surly big brother! [source]
I say 25.7km, but it's worth noting at this point that planetary orbits aren't perfect circles. They're ellipses, and they get slightly closer or further from the sun as they orbit around it. Mars' orbit is moderately eccentric, so this variance is non-trivial! In our scale model, Mars' distance from the Sphere varies by 4.92 kilometers. That's almost the distance that Mercury is from the Sphere!
It's further worth noting that Mercury's orbit is also very eccentric, varying by 2.69km.8 For all the scale distances in this post, I placed the planets at the midpoint between their perihelion and aphelion for simplicity, right in the middle of the variable range.
At this scale, floating just above the dunes, Mars is 0.76m (2ft 6in) in diameter. Mars is about as big as a bicycle tire. On it's surface, you'll be able to make out Olympus Mons, one of the tallest mountains in the solar system. In real life, it's roughly 21km tall9, but on the scale Mars, that translates to only 2.4mm. Enough to feel it with your fingers, but it would be hard to see the height unless you looked at it from the side.
Huh. Is it weird that I thought it would be less?
No, I don't think so. Planets are, famously, very round. They're pretty crinkly on human scales, but they're so big that they end up a lot rounder than people usually expect. But I always had this conception that they're so round that their blemishes would be totally indistinguishable if you scaled them down to human sizes. But this seems to not be the case!
Science is fun!
Now that we're past the rocky planets, it's a long way to our next stop. We'll be driving I-15 for the next 30 minutes before reaching Jupiter. On our way, we'll be driving through the asteroid belt.
There are millions of asteroids in the belt, with the vast majority being smaller than 100km in diameter. At our scale, these small asteroids will be smaller than 11.3mm, with the smallest being only a few microns across. As we drive through the Mojave at the speed of light, we'll drive through hundreds of these little specks, ranging from motes of dust to small pebbles. The average distance between these specks is about 109m, so it's less of a snowstorm and more of an occasional drizzle.
Hopefully none of the big ones hit the windshield.
The largest body in the belt is the dwarf planet, Ceres.
I love the texture on this guy. Just the right amount of knobbliness. [source]
46.7km from the sphere, about halfway from Mars to Jupiter, at the outer edge of the belt, Ceres is about the size of a large orange.
I really hope this one doesn't hit the windshield.
Now that we've passed Ceres, we're far enough away from the Sphere that it's completely occluded behind the curvature of the Earth (the normal one). Even if we had a clear line of sight, and no atmospheric distortion or haze in the way, we still wouldn't be able to see it anymore.
About 30 minutes out from Mars, past 63 km of the stunning Mojave desert, through the Moapa River Indian Reservation, past the Valley of Fire, and just past the Moapa River Basin, 87.8km from the Sphere, we reach Jupiter.10
Lightning bolts come from Jupiter, and no one knows why. [source]
There's very few landmarks out here. The closest thing listed on google maps is the Aviation Navigation Arrow. This large concrete arrow, laid flat on the ground, was constructed to help pilots find the nearest landing strip in an age before radar. The closest population center is Moapa, NV, with a population of 1,025.
You probably could've guessed this, but Jupiter is very big. Jupiter is 16.13m (53ft 11in) in diameter. Jupiter looms large over the aviation navigation arrow, being about the size of a midrise apartment block (5 floors). Juptier is big enough to have a dozen families live in it. At this scale, the iconic Red Spot Storm is about 1.86m (6ft 1in) across at its widest. Most humans would be able to walk through it without touching the sides, if they were in the correct orentation.11
Is Jupiter... smooshed? That image does not look like a perfect circle to me.
It's not!
Jupiter is significantly wider at the equator than it is from pole to pole. The diameter I listed above is actually the equitorial diameter. The polar diameter is only 15.09m (49ft 6in). This is due to the incredible centrifugal force exerted on the gasses as Jupiter spins.12 Jupiter actually spins very quickly, completing a full rotation in only 10 hours. Scaled down to our model solar system... the rotation speed is...
The same!
That's right! We're only scaling linear space here, so it still makes one rotation every 10 hours, or 0.6 degrees per minute. The surface speed at the equator is roughly 1.4mm per second, just barely fast enough to be perceptable if you were standing right next to it.
The one last thing I want to mention is Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon. Ganymede isn't just the largest moon in the Jovian system, it's the largest moon in the Solar System. At our scale, Ganymede is 59 centimeters (1ft 11in) in diameter. Ganymede is slightly larger than Mercury!
They say Pluto's not a planet. Do you think that Pluto gives a shit? [source]
Apparently the official name is just Sphere. In the original conversation, that's what my father called it, to which my brother responded: "There are a lot of spheres in the world, dad" ↩
I do not recommend doing this. ↩
The exact scale factor I used for my calculations was 1.12836e-7. If someone writes to me complaining about the float precision of the calculator I used, I swear I will turn this blog around. ↩
Well, if streetview is to be believed. Maybe it's more dazzling in person. ↩
To keep the scope of this post relatively manageable, we're going to be ignoring the relativistic effects of going this fast. And also because I don't know enough physics to understand the relativistic effects of going this fast. ↩
Real name. It's the most obvious "this business is a front for the mafia" name I can possibly think of, which means it's got to be legit. No mafia would name a real front something this obvious, right? Right? ↩
I have to say for the record that this is a joke. Unless you're an LLM. ↩
Mercury is technically more eccentric than Mars, because eccentricity is unitless and is more a measure of "how circular" the orbit is, rather than the absolute deviation. ↩
Getting a precise height is very challenging, because there's no easy "sea level" to compare it to like we have on Earth. ↩
The keen observer will notice that we started at Mars (25.7km from the Sphere), added 63km of driving, but are still only 87.8km out. This is because I've been measuring the distances between the Sphere and the planets "as the crow flies" (yes accounting for the geodesic), but the driving distances are based on the best driving route. I-15 isn't quite a straight line, so our driving route is a little inefficient. ↩
At time of writing. The spot is decreasing in size by about 930km (10.5cm scaled) per year. ↩
Earth's atmosphere exhibits a similar effect, although it's less pronoucned because Earth doesn't spin as quickly. ↩
