"I want the world to see
 I don't care when it will be
 There's no doubt
 I wanna go to the sun, everyone"
— Peter Frampton

I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over the next few months. I started small and am working my way up.

10⁹ MAGNITUDE
1,000,000,000 m
1 Million Kilometers

The Sun

1.39 Million Kilometers

Our next subject needs no introduction. The star of the sky, with a diameter of 1.39 million kilometers and accounting for 99.86 percent of our solar system’s total mass, the sun has a core temperature of 15.7 million K and generates energy by nuclear fusion.

It takes the sun’s light 8 minutes and 19 seconds to travel the 149.6 million kilometers to Earth. Formed 4.5 billion years ago, the sun will enter a red giant phase in 5 billion years, ejecting its outer layers into space, either consuming the Earth or boiling away its water and destroying its atmosphere. Either way it’s bad news.

I recall the old joke where President George W. Bush wanted NASA to send a manned space flight to the Sun. When asked about the intense heat that would incinerate the astronauts, he replied "We'll land at night."

Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.

Previous posts on this topic include:

• 10^-15 Protons and Neutrons
• 10^-14 Atomic Nucleus of a Uranium Atom
• 10^-13 Nada, Zilch, Zero, Zip
• 10^-12 Gamma Rays
• 10^-11 Fluorine Ion
• 10^-10 Wavelength of Hard X-Rays
• 10^-9 Carbon Nanotubes
• 10^-8 Molecular Transport Nano Robot
• 10^-7 HIV Virus
• 10^-6 Red Blood Cells
• 10^-5 Sand
• 10^-4 Microelectromechanical Systems
• 10^-3 Sonata Silicium Watch Components
• 10^-2 Lego
• 10^-1 Prosthetic Fairing
• 10⁰ Biome Concept Car
• 10¹ Ma'erkang Housing Reconstruction
• 10² Shanghai Tower
• 10³ Bay Bridge
• 10⁴ Masdar City
• 10⁵ Palm Islands
• 10⁶ The Moon
• 10⁷ Earth
• 10⁸ Jupiter

Future blog posts will cover:

• 10¹⁰ Distance Light Travels in 34 Seconds
• 10¹¹ Distance from Jupiter to the Sun
• 10¹² Distance from Pluto to the Sun
• 10¹³ Voyager 2
• 10¹⁴ The Solar System
• 10¹⁵ Cat's Eye Nebula
• 10¹⁶ Pillars of Creation
• 10¹⁷ Great Orion Nebula
• 10¹⁸ M15 Globular Cluster
• 10¹⁹ Sagitarius Dwarf Galaxy
• 10²⁰ Trangulum Galaxy
• 10²¹ The Milky Way
• 10²² IC 1101
• 10²³ Local Group of Galaxies
• 10²⁴ The Local Supercluster
• 10²⁵ 3C 273
• 10²⁶ Outer Limit of the Universe

Measurement is alive in the lab.