Ask any random person with a globe in your hand where the nearest star is when you would use this scaled down reality.
The nearest star Alpha Centauri is located at 1.000.000 km away using a globe with a diameter of 30cm.
Andromeda the nearest galaxi is at 650.000.000.000 km from the tiny 30cm globe.
No ORDINARY person can grasp the cosmological reality <gratuitous remark>
Astronomical sizes, distances, and time scales are way beyond ordinary human experience, true. That's why large numbers are sometimes colloquially referred to as "astronomical". So? Are you saying that because most humans aren't used to dealing with astronomically vast distances means they don't exist? Sorry. That's wrong.
If you say you do, you are simply lying to yourself.
Thank you for sharing your uninformed opinion. It will be given consideration commensurate with what it cost to obtain.
Not a single indication what we are dealing with when looking at the stars.
Everything on earth, in the air, at sea gives us a rough estimation what we are dealing with distance wise.
Only when it comes to the cosmos, our senses are off by an idiotic margin.
No matter how many times we have wittinessed the sun, moon and the stars.
We cannot [fathom] the supposed cosmological distances compared to long rides/ flights we made on earth.
Well, yeah... so? That's why we don't rely on our senses to determine cosmological distances. We use instruments - they're much more precise and much more reliable.
No, that sun doesn't look like it is 150.000.000 km away, no matter how many years you walked the earth or how many rationalisations you have made.
It does to me. The sun is really, really, big compared with anything on earth, so to appear the size it is, it must be really, really, far away (compared with distances on earth).
Obviously, YMMV.
It still looks like it's much, much closer than 150.000.000km.
Which is why you shouldn't rely on your senses alone to determine the distance to the sun.
So why does our brain not correct this misconception ?
We know the earth is a globe and millions km away for more than 2000 years.
It was much more recent than 2000 years ago before a good measure of the size of the astronomical unit [mean radius of the earth's orbit] was determined, and, thus, the size of solar system became known. The ancients knew the sun was "far away", and through the ages some wild-ass guesses were made (all terribly low, as far as I know), but a realistic size was
much later.
Do you know how difficult it was to measure the distance to the sun? It was
very difficult, but some well-educated people
devised a clever method to determine it with reasonable accuracy, and it succeeded.
When does our collective brain estimates the distance properly in relation to the 'well known facts"
Even modern children when asked how far the sun is , fail to remotely come up with the right answer.
According to you, modern children come up with "a dome in sort of an aquarium type home" models of the cosmos, too. Most, but obviously not all, children learn why that isn't right, but only if they're reasonably astute, inquisitive, or both.
We know the sun is millions of km away for very long
We teach our children that the sun is millions of km away
Do you? "We" do, because it makes absolute sense.
We repeat it as much as we can
We still do not click with this cosmic reality when we observe the stars, moon and the sun.
Strange, because 'evolution' should have corrected our brain by now.
"Corrected" in what way? Why? Where's the heritable trait that would be an advantage in reproductive success, which is what drives evolution.
The input is there, the timespan, education,..... but nothing has changed over the last 2000 years.
It may seem like an astronomical number to you, but 2000 years, in terms of primate evolution, is *nothing*.
Even more important, skills learned through education, practice, and discovery do not affect DNA, so those skills are not a heritable trait. Even if both of your parents were virtuoso pianists, you will still have to learn how to play the piano if you want to be able to play the piano. I first heard this in 9th grade biology; it made sense then, has been extensively backed by experiments, and makes sense now.
The cosmos seems way, way closer than the hardcore numbers suggest.
Which has been the point all along. Our senses are optimized to enable us the best chance of surviving human-scale perils and obstacles. Whether the sun, moon, and stars were hundreds, thousands, or gazillions of km away mattered not at all to our distant (and not so distant) ancestors' survival; they simply were what they were.
Maybe because we are hardwired in the proper way by our creator ??
More likely it's because these things had no bearing at all on whether our ancestors survived and have to be learned by each individual. Most simply don't care, because none of this directly affects them. Some actively resist learning these things.
[Edit] typo.