Spark and Perl go looking
Which one is my house?
You cannot see it.
Far too small.
But I painted the door blue!
It was a lovely door.
The blue is water and the white swirls are clouds.
Why is the edge bendy?
Because we live on a ball.
You simply cannot feel it while you are standing on it.
Then the ball must be small, if I cannot feel it.
The opposite, Spark.
…It is so big that my bit of it looks flat. The whole of it is like a giant ball.
The bend is there. I am just standing on far too little of it.
That is exactly why.
Try this, and you will know how big the Earth is.
There is a blue line round the edge. Is that the sea, seen sideways?
Think about it.
Blue is not only water.
I know! It is the air!
Yes. Air.
…All of it? The whole sky is that stripe.
From up here you could scratch it off with one claw.
Everything that has ever breathed lives in it.
You are standing on it.
At sunset, turn your back to the Sun — that grey band climbing up the sky is the Earth’s own shadow.
Where the Earth is clear, it climbs high in the sky. The darker it gets, the lower it stays. Where it is black, it never comes up. No shading at all: it does not matter where you live.
Put the planets in size orderPut the planets in orderJump the solar systemCould you stand on a planet or moon?Which one does not belong?