This means fortunately you do not need to worry about the universe's expansion in our daily lives. So what do all the speeds add up to? If everything were perfectly aligned in the same direction, your final speed would be 1. By sitting in your chair you are traveling the distance across the country just a hair under five seconds, which is definitely something to ponder next time you find yourself lounging comfortably.
What a pity you can't rack up frequent flier miles for this trip! Current Issue. Archived Issues. Special Issues. About the Conference. Featured Panels. Conference Schedule. Conference Archive. Get Involved. Submit Your Research. Join Our Team. Faculty Advisors. Sponsor Us. Recent Publications. Archived Research. Submit Research. Career Center. Our Team. What We Do. Our Mission. Our History. Blog Home. All Posts. Voices of JYI. Voices of the BoD. JYI Webinars. Contact Us.
Earth's spin is constant, but the speed depends on what latitude you are located at. Here's an example. The circumference distance around the largest part of the Earth is roughly 24, miles 40, kilometers , according to NASA. This area is also called the equator. If you estimate that a day is 24 hours long, you divide the circumference by the length of the day. Related: Check out some stunning images of Earth from space.
You won't be moving quite as fast at other latitudes, however. If we move halfway up the globe to 45 degrees in latitude either north or south , you calculate the speed by using the cosine a trigonometric function of the latitude.
A good scientific calculator should have a cosine function available if you don't know how to calculate it. The cosine of 45 is 0. That speed decreases more as you go farther north or south. By the time you get to the North or South poles, your spin is very slow indeed — it takes an entire day to spin in place. Space agencies love to take advantage of Earth's spin.
If they're sending humans to the International Space Station, for example, the preferred location to do so is close to the equator. That's why cargo missions to the International Space Station, for example, launch from Florida.
By doing so and launching in the same direction as Earth's spin, rockets get a speed boost to help them fly into space. Earth's spin, of course, is not the only motion we have in space. We can calculate that with basic geometry. First, we have to figure out how far Earth travels. Earth takes about days to orbit the sun. The orbit is an ellipse, but to make the math simpler, let's say it's a circle. So, Earth's orbit is the circumference of a circle. The distance from Earth to the sun — called an astronomical unit — is 92,, miles ,, kilometers , according to the International Astronomers Union.
That is the radius r. So in one year, Earth travels about million miles million km. So, Earth travels about 1. Related: How Fast does Light Travel? The sun has an orbit of its own in the Milky Way. The sun is about 25, light-years from the center of the galaxy, and the Milky Way is at least , light-years across.
Questions about how fast the earth--or anything, for that matter--is moving are incomplete unless they also ask, "Compared to what? Consider the movement of the earth's surface with respect to the planet's center.
The earth rotates once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4. Thus, the surface of the earth at the equator moves at a speed of meters per second--or roughly 1, miles per hour. As schoolchildren, we learn that the earth is moving about our sun in a very nearly circular orbit. It covers this route at a speed of nearly 30 kilometers per second, or 67, miles per hour. In addition, our solar system--Earth and all--whirls around the center of our galaxy at some kilometers per second, or , miles per hour.
As we consider increasingly large size scales, the speeds involved become absolutely huge! The galaxies in our neighborhood are also rushing at a speed of nearly 1, kilometers per second towards a structure called the Great Attractor, a region of space roughly million light-years one light year is about six trillion miles away from us. This Great Attractor, having a mass quadrillion times greater than our sun and span of million light-years, is made of both the visible matter that we can see along with the so-called dark matter that we cannot see.
Each of the motions described above were given relative to some structure. Our motion about our sun was described relative to our sun, while the motion of our local group of galaxies was described as toward the Great Attractor.
0コメント