[above] the stockholm globe arena / the sun :: photo source

to be found in stockholm, sweden, this enormous building holds 2 records, one far more interesting than the other - to me at least.

the less interesting but still impressive record? it’s the largest hemispherical building in the world with a diameter of 361ft and volume of 21′188′800 cubic ft.

the best of its records? the building represents the sun in what is the world’s largest scale model of the solar system (1:20,000,000). that’s to say, all other planets of the solar system are represented by other precisely sized and distanced objects throughout sweden. as an example of the distances between these models, the dwarf planet of pluto can be found 300km from the stockholm globe arena and has a diameter of 12cm.

maybe i’m easily impressed but i find the idea of this really interesting, especially considering the size of the globe arena. hopefully kids learning about astronomy these days, those who get to visit these ‘planets’ in person, are as susceptive as i am.

anyway, a few of the other planets scattered around sweden:


[above] clockwise from top left (click for sources): venus, jupiter, earth, mercury

there’s a webpage for sweden’s solar system here. you can also find all the planets’ locations through google earth here and google maps here.


of course, this isn’t the only scale model of the solar system on earth. there’s actually a larger model that spans the uk (website here), the sun sitting 393km from pluto, but there’s a problem that could’ve, and should’ve, been avoided: the planets aren’t to scale. i lost interest as soon as i found out that fact.

for a list of all the largest ones in the world, check out this wikipedia page. none contain a sun as impressive as sweden’s but they’re all good efforts.