Feet In Place, Moving Through Space

Feet In Place, Moving Through Space

 

I realized recently that I have long forgotten the names of our planets in our solar system. Planets got me thinking about gravity and gravity somehow got me to thinking about objects moving in space. How fast am I, any of us, traveling through space?  

 

First, I was embarrassed I didn’t know the planet’s names, the simple “geography” of our solar system, so I learned them, again. Do you remember their names and order? I taught myself an acronym to remember the order of the planets moving from closest to furthest away from the Sun. 

 

M V E M   J S U N. Mercury, venus, earth, mars, jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune, and the poor planet that used to be a planet but is no longer a planet because it was incorrectly labeled a planet, but is just a dwarf planet, Pluto. It didn’t meet the three requirements for a planet, one of which has to do with clearing the debris around itself and Pluto hasn’t done that. So scratch Pluto from the list. What was nine planets previously is now eight. Plus a dwarf. Or vertically challenged. I’m just trying to be politically or in this case planetly, correct.

 

Now, back to gravity on a micro level and by micro I mean personal. How does it affect my being, how does it affect my walking, how does it affect me being able to jump up in the air or toss an object up above my head and catch it on the way down, or get up from the floor (very important these days). 

 

What is my everyday interaction with gravity and then take it further, a grander scale, moving several additional layers farther out from the most intimate relationship with gravity.

 

The first one is easy. I am in my seventies and more aware than ever how gravity affects my daily functioning. Simple things like getting out of bed or getting up from a chair to a standing position require more effort than they used to. That has something to do with my muscle strength associated with aging but it brings attention to the force of gravity which I and everyone else have to contend with every day from birth to death, but we don’t normally give it much thought. That’s the first layer, the personal one. Leave the science of that for another day.

 

Moving out from there, is the idea that I am on a planet that is moving in multiple ways. First of all the Earth is rotating so I am on an object, the Earth, which is constantly turning counterclockwise. Relative to the North Pole I, or the earth, or we, are tilted 23.5° to the right, away from vertical. Important, but not in this conversation, unless you are on Jeopardy and need to know.

 

The speed of the Earth’s spin varies according to where you are situated on the planet. At the equator the Earth is spinning at about 1,000 mph (0.278 miles per second, mps.) or 1600 km per hour. It’s faster if you are closer to the North Pole or South Pole, maybe not for obvious reasons but you can figure that out.

 

Okay so we are sitting or standing or lying or whatever it is you’re doing, on an earth that is spinning a thousand miles per hour or 0.278 mps. Let me now take it to the next level of confusion. In addition to spinning on its axis the Earth is moving around the Sun. How fast? I knew you would ask. An average speed of 66,600 mph or 18.5 miles per second. You can Google for kilometers.

 

Now, the sun itself orbits our galaxy called the Milky Way at 514,000 mph or 142.9 mps.  

 

And the solar system itself, the entire solar system is moving in our galaxy, relative to something they call the CMB or Cosmic Microwave Background, at 827,000 mph or 229.7 mps.

 

The entire galaxy of which our solar system is a part) is moving through CMB at 1.3 million mph or 373 mps or 600 kmps. 

 

Okay, let me ground this discussion which started out to be about planets, gravity and my relationship to it and then spun way out into the cosmos only to come back and focus on how freaking fast am I moving through space. All of which doesn’t help me get off the floor any easier but feels like it’s a good thing to know.

 

My feet are on the ground. That’s a reality I can grasp. It doesn’t feel like I am moving and that’s because everything is moving with me. We are all moving together through space. Unless our speed suddenly slows down or speeds up we won’t notice the speed at which we are traveling. We are all moving pretty much at the same speed although you might walk faster than I do. And I could notice that. 

 

Here is what I do know. The Earth is spinning and in turn it is moving around the Sun, and the Sun and the Earth are in turn moving as part of our entire solar system, that’s our eight planets, which  is moving within our galaxy, and our galaxy is moving within the universe. Where to? Anybody’s guess. That about sums it up. We are hurtling through space ultimately at approximately 1.3 million miles per hour or 373 miles per second or 600 km per second. Not as fast as light moves which is at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kmps) just to give you some relativity, so to speak.

 

And, as it turns out, it’s a good thing we aren’t going as fast as the speed of light because, and I will quote some site that I Googled,

 

“As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass rises precipitously. If an object tries to travel 186,000 miles per second, its mass becomes infinite, and so does the energy required to move it. For this reason, no normal object can travel as fast or faster than the speed of light.”

 

Okay, then it sounds like I would become one with the universe if I was traveling that fast, which might be fun but not today.

 

And so to sum up, although moving at an incredibly fast speed, neither I, nor you, feel a thing, other than I feel a little depressed that I know so little in such a huge universe. Also, although you and I  might be standing in place, our butts are hauling through space at a pretty fast clip

 

I think it’s time to give gravity a rest, slow down, and take a nap.