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...If, then, we represent our earth as a little ball of one
inch diameter, the sun would be a big globe nine feet across
and 323 yards away, that is about a fifth of a mile, four
or five minutes’ walking. The moon would be a small pea
two feet and a half from the world. Between earth and sun
there would be the two inner planets, Mercury and Venus, at
distances of one hundred and twenty-five and two hundred and
fifty yards from the sun. All round and about these bodies
there would be emptiness until you came to Mars, a hundred
and seventy-five feet beyond the earth; Jupiter nearly a mile
away, a foot in diameter; Saturn, a little smaller, two miles
off; Uranus four miles off and Neptune six miles off. Then
nothingness and nothingness except for small particles and
drifting scraps of attenuated vapour for thousands of miles.
The nearest star to earth on this scale would be 40,000 miles
away.
These figures will serve perhaps to give one some conception
of the immense emptiness of space in which the drama of life
goes on.
- H.G. Wells 'Brief History of the World' 1922
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