I'm looking for a fun bit of information to throw into my daughter's birthday card who turns one year old in a few days. I was thinking of taking the entire rough distance that a human being travels on this lonely rock as it flies through the mostly empty void we call a universe. Maybe something along the lines of "Congrats on travelling XXX kilometers safely (or maybe an easier to remember metric as the distance will be pretty huge after adding everything up). I'm not sure what the frame of reference should be. The Great Attractor maybe? Anyways, this is mean to be kind of silly.
Word of warning - I'm not so good at math and I may miss some calculations which is why I'm asking here.
Let's assume she is on the equator of the Earth because I don't want to guess how far she travels being further up in Florida. In the grand scheme of things, it probably won't matter much at all anyways.
Earth = ~40,000km circumference.
Distance travelled in 1 year = ~14,600,000 km.
Good so far? I hope so! On to how far Earth travels in one orbit around the Sun.
Earth is zipping along at ~30 km a second.
Distance travelled in 1 year = ~946,080,000 km.
Next part is for how far the Solar system travels in one year while orbiting around the Milky Way center.
Solar System is orbiting around Milky Way center at ~220 km a second.
Distance travelled in 1 year = ~6,937,920,000 km.
Next up is how fast the Milky Way is travelling through the universe. I think it is heading towards the "Great Attractor" so we can use that as the next frame of reference.
Distance Milky Way travels towards Great Attractor = ~1,000 km a second.
Distance travelled in 1 year = ~31,536,000,000 km.
I guess that would be a good point to stop at. Hard to come up with anything else unless the Great Attractor is also orbiting or moving towards something, pulling us all along with it. So... all those add up to:
39,434,600,000 km! Yeah yeah yeah. I know. It is all relative (and I'm her relative! :boxedin:). And I'm probably doing something wrong, grossly over-simplifying things, and forgetting stuff. Remember that it is okay to fudge the numbers and be silly about it. :D
So that is like... 0.004 light years? Not very sexy when I put it that way. Thoughts?
I pulled my numbers off the interwebz (mostly a Scientific American article).
Word of warning - I'm not so good at math and I may miss some calculations which is why I'm asking here.
Let's assume she is on the equator of the Earth because I don't want to guess how far she travels being further up in Florida. In the grand scheme of things, it probably won't matter much at all anyways.
Earth = ~40,000km circumference.
Distance travelled in 1 year = ~14,600,000 km.
Good so far? I hope so! On to how far Earth travels in one orbit around the Sun.
Earth is zipping along at ~30 km a second.
Distance travelled in 1 year = ~946,080,000 km.
Next part is for how far the Solar system travels in one year while orbiting around the Milky Way center.
Solar System is orbiting around Milky Way center at ~220 km a second.
Distance travelled in 1 year = ~6,937,920,000 km.
Next up is how fast the Milky Way is travelling through the universe. I think it is heading towards the "Great Attractor" so we can use that as the next frame of reference.
Distance Milky Way travels towards Great Attractor = ~1,000 km a second.
Distance travelled in 1 year = ~31,536,000,000 km.
I guess that would be a good point to stop at. Hard to come up with anything else unless the Great Attractor is also orbiting or moving towards something, pulling us all along with it. So... all those add up to:
39,434,600,000 km! Yeah yeah yeah. I know. It is all relative (and I'm her relative! :boxedin:). And I'm probably doing something wrong, grossly over-simplifying things, and forgetting stuff. Remember that it is okay to fudge the numbers and be silly about it. :D
So that is like... 0.004 light years? Not very sexy when I put it that way. Thoughts?
I pulled my numbers off the interwebz (mostly a Scientific American article).
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1QMWd1M
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