Moving right along

[fbhjr]

I am obsessed with speed. Not with cars, planes or anything like that.
But, with how the world rotates under our feet, revolves around the sun,
the sun around the galaxy and the galaxy away from the big bang.

It’s one of the ways I deal with things. I can say “That happened x years
ago and now we’re x*zillion miles away”.
Hey, it’s what I’ve got.

The problem is figuring it out is challenging.

The Earth is easy. It rotates once in 24 hours and is 24,901 around at the
equator. So, 1037.56 miles per hour for that.
Of course, I live 42 degrees up from the equator, so it is only 767.7 miles
an hour for me.
And, we’re in a pretty steady orbit 92,954,432 from the sun, going the
584,049,922 in a year is a pretty clean 66,628 miles an hour around the sun.
So, the movement around the sun is much bigger than the rotation of the
Earth, but that makes sense.


The problems start when you get into the sun going around the galaxy. Part
of the problem is that no one is all that sure of just how far we are from
that center we cannot see. Or, how fast we go around. Galaxies rotate
differently from planets.
But, the best I can find is that we’re about 27,200 light years from the
core and go around every 225 million years. (I know this contradicts one
Monty Python songs, but I’m afraid additional research has been done since
it was written.)
This means we’re rotating at about 509,378 miles per hour around the center
of the galaxy.
Unlike the others, for my purpose, this doesn’t go back and forth. Yes,
112 million years from now we’ll be going the other way on the other side
of the galaxy. But, that isn’t a big concern for me right now. I’m going
to count is as just a single direction as if I live to be 100 it will only
change .00016 degrees. Not a big enough angle for me to worry about.
So, it is a much bigger vector than the others.


The real problem is how fast the galaxy is moving.
This is a real mystery for which no one seems to have an answer.
The best I’ve been able to find is that the redshift change in the cosmic
background radiation says we’re headed vaguely in the direction of the
galactic core at about 343 miles per second.


It’s been more than 25 years since I ran that planetarium on weekends at
the museum. So, it is very possible I’ve got all of this muddled anyhow.
But, to me it seems like the direction we’re rotating in the galaxy and the
direction the galaxy is moving are a bit at odds.
The other ones cancel out as they just go round and round. But, this one
won’t cancel for a while.
So, adding the vectors together, it seems like we’re moving about 1,036,067
miles an hour.

Comments

[uawildcatgrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's too much math for me to be concerned with...

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

Remember, I do geometry for a living...

[uawildcatgrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, good luck with that...geometry (more specifically proofs) is what started my eternal burning HATE for all things math related! (though to be fair I honestly think it was because I had a crappy teacher!)

[endlessblush.livejournal.com]

I was never very good at math

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Fun!