From a book by Charles Swindoll entitled Come Before Winter
Imagine a perfectly smooth glass pavement on which the finest speck can be seen. Then shrink our sun from 865,000 miles in diameter to only two feet, the size of a beach ball... and place the ball on the pavement to represent the sun.Step off 82 paces (about two feet per pace), and to represent proportionately the first planet, Mercury, put down a tiny mustard seed. Take 60 steps more, and for Venus put an ordinary BB. Mark 78 more steps ... put down a green pea representing earth. Step off 108 paces from there, and for Mars put down a pinhead. Sprinkle around some fine dust for the asteroids, then take 788 steps more. For Jupiter, place an orange on the glass at that spot. After 934 more steps, put down a golf ball for Saturn.
Now it gets really involved. Mark 2,086 steps more, and for Uranus ... a marble. Another 2,322 steps from there you arrive at Neptune. Let a cherry represent Neptune. This will take two and a half miles, and we haven't even discussed Pluto!
If we swing completely around, we have a smooth glass surface five miles in diameter, yet just a tiny fraction of the heavens - excluding Pluto! On this surface, five miles across, we have only a seed, BB, Pea, Pinhead, Some dust, an Orange, Golf Ball, a Marble, and a cherry. Guess how far we'd have to go on the same scale before we could put down another two-foot ball to represent the nearest star?
Come on, guess. Seven hundred paces? Two thousand steps more? Four thousand four hundred feet? No, you're way off.
We'd have to go 6,720 miles before we could arrive at that star. Miles, not feet. And that's just the first star among millions. In one galaxy among perhaps thousand, maybe billions. And all of it in perpetual motion ... perfectly synchronized ... the most accurate timepiece know to man.
Phenomenal isn't the word for it.