"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. Go to the original post...