Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Let's Do The Math


The Earth is traveling around the Sun at a rate of 67,00 miles per hour. That comes to about 586,920,000 miles per year (give or take a little for Leap Years). One conclusion you can make from this is that you spend your life going around in circles. You may have already suspected that, but now you know.

But there is more.

The Sun is orbiting around the Milky Way Galaxy. I found differnt estimates as to the speed of that orbit so we'll use the more conservative one of 19.5 km/s. That calculates out to 43,620 miles per hour which comes to 382,375,179 miles per year.

But there is more yet.

From this article at Wikpedia, we read the following:

"Astronomers believe the Milky Way is moving at approximately 600 km per second relative to the observed locations of other nearby galaxies. Most recent estimates range from 130 km/s to 1,000 km/s. If the Galaxy is moving at 600 km/s, Earth travels 51.84 million km per day, or more than 18.9 billion km per year, about 4.5 times its closest distance from Pluto. The Galaxy is thought to be moving towards the constellation Hydra, and may someday become a close-knit member of the Virgo cluster of galaxies."


That 18.9 billion Km per year calculates out to 11,743,915,533 miles per year. After so many years of traveling all those miles while going around in circles, it's no wonder you feel tired out.

And how many miles is that? Take the 11.7 billion miles over an 80 year life span and you come up with over 939.5 billion miles.

There is only one thing you can say to that.

Life is a real trip....

Cheers!

~ The Billy Goat ~

PS: One more thing. If you live past the age of 85.5, your odometer will be over 1.0 Trillion miles.

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