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How fast are you moving?

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How fast are you moving
    If you put this simple question to different people, you would get different answers depending on where they are or what they are doing.
" I am running at 20 km/h"
" I am on my motorbike at 80Km/h"
" My car odometer says I am at 120 Km/h"
"Ladies & Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, We are currently cruising at 800 Km/h at an altitude of 35000 feet."
"Houston, we don't have a problem,  all ok up here in the International Space station & we are orbiting the Earth at 28000 km/h". Which is the top speed of our satellites.
And if I put that to my friend watching TV with me in my living room, "Are you nuts? I am not moving, is your head spinning?"
Interestingly each one of them is right & each one of them is wrong. 
Speed is relative & always has a seemingly stationary reference point. If there is no reference point then you would not know if you are moving or not.

Consider this example: If you are in a moving train, landscape you see out of the window is the reference point. If you close the windows and change the reference point to a fellow passenger then you are not moving as everything in the train seems stationery to you.

Forget about the train, the Earth itself is moving. So its not my head that is spinning after all, our Earth is spinning on its axis & due to gravity you, the train and every thing else on the planet are moving along.
Earth spins the fastest at the equator & gets slower towards the poles. Earth is spinning around 1675 km/h. If that's amazing then its just the tip of the iceberg. It gets more interesting from here on. 

Earth also moves around the Sun. It completes one circle (149,600,000 km) in one year. How fast is that?  
Earth is carrying you, the train, all our artificial Satellites & our Moon around the Sun at an incredible speed of  30 km/sec or 108000 Km/h. 

We are not done yet, The Sun is moving too.

Our dear Sun is quite special to us, but actually is an ordinary sized star among the billions in our galaxy The Milky way.  Our Earth along with other planets, asteroids, comets are bound to the Sun due to its immense gravitational force, which constitutes our Solar System. 

The Sun carrying the solar system, travels through the Milky Way galaxy orbiting its center at an astonishing speed of 220 km/sec or 792,000 Km/h.  One Sun Year = 230,000,000 Earth years, that's the time it takes for Sun to complete one circle. I leave it to you to calculate the distance.

Lets recap. You are moving on Earth, The Earth is rotating around its axis and also orbits around the Sun, The Sun orbits around the Milky Way. No its not over yet. Yes, the Milky way is ALSO MOVING.....

Milky way galaxy is one of billions of galaxies in the Universe & part of a local group of galaxies. Our Milky Galaxy with the local group is travelling (reference point is the Cosmic Microwave Background) towards the Virgo super cluster at a mind boggling speed of 600 km/sec or 2,160,000 km/h.


So lets do the Math..

You on the surface of the Earth + Earth around the Sun + Sun around the Milky Way + Milky Way towards the Super Cluster. Which equals to..

1675 + 108000 + 792000 + 2160000 = 3,061,675 Km/h which is 850 Km/Sec


It is under debate that our Universe is also moving and there are theories for existence of multiple universes, but about that & speed of light some other time.

I think now we got the answer to the simple question of how fast are you moving. Thanks for reading and I leave you with this incredible thought

An hour spent by you watching a movie , reading a book or chatting with your friend, you would have traveled 3.06 Million Kms in Space.


Ravindra

Noida
25-03-2017 Saturday 19:45 hrs

Comments

  1. Khandrika26/3/17 10:44

    Mind blowing. Nice work

    ReplyDelete
  2. nebuchandnazzer19/4/17 07:40

    This explains why i sometimes feel dizzy for no reason at all 😀

    Great read!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ravindra21/4/17 11:00

      :)) Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.

      Delete

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