Where Have You Been in the Last Hour?

You might have thought you'd sat on the couch in one place for the past hour.  Or perhaps you were sitting at the dinner table, or walking a few blocks or driving a few miles.  But even if you've spent the past hour on a plane, the distance you've traveled is insignificant in the grand scheme.

In the past hour, you've moved several hundred miles, riding the spinning Earth.  Here at 39 degrees north latitude in Silver Spring, it's about 806 miles.  At the equator, it's over 1,000.  But that's a small fraction of the distance you've traveled along the big ellipse of the Earth's orbit around the sun - about 66,600 miles since one hour ago.  How fast are you moving?  Well, Superman (woman), faster than a speeding bullet.  A speedy bullet might go 1,700 miles per hour - of course it would only go that speed for a few seconds.  You, and the Earth, are moving 39 times faster than that - and it feels like standing still!

Well, it pretty much is standing still compared to the 370 miles per second you're moving through space, along with Earth, Sun and the rest of the vicinity.  1,332,000 miles per hour, or 32 million miles per day.

Feeling the head rush yet?