When you feel you absolutely know something, go watch a reel by this fellow

It is fun to learn from someone who also has a great laugh.  Other topics range from imagining shrinking the Sun down the size of the period at the end of this sentence to extremely early steps in the evolution of man.  As to that period, the nearest star to it would be four miles away at that scale.

You rarely see an accurate illustration of the scale of the solar system. Textbooks show a family photo of the planets like their orbits were modest relative to the planet sizes.

There is a true scale model in my county, installed by an amateur astronomy group.

It starts with the sun about a yard/meter in diameter in a small town. Mercury is across the street. Venus is a nail head a block away. Earth is another nail head up the street. Mars is at the fire station. Jupiter is the size of a coin (I forget which) out of town. This continues until Pluto is a pinhead 4 miles out in the country. The nearest star is not shown because its model would be in earth orbit.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on; "how to prove an alien abduction":

"Grab something off the shelf that’s on the spaceship—an ashtray, it doesn’t matter what. Because I can tell you, if they flew here from another galaxy, no matter what you’ve pulled off the shelf, it’ll be unlike anything we have on Earth".

Until I see that, I'm remaining a skeptic.

😉

I love his Podcast Startalk...If you were ever curious as to what it would take to be successful working in the field of advanced weapon systems, I suggest reading Neil deGrasse Tyson's Book Accessory to War.