I love contemplating the awesomeness of the fact that we are hurtling through space.The never ending spaceness of it all, and stuff.
Every moment that you and I have been alive, we have been on the move.
And seriously so.
It is mind-boggling when you begin to research it a bit.
The earth right now as I type this is moving at a speed of 67,062 miles per hour through space, while spinning [rotating] at 1,000 miles per hour.
Even while lying in bed, fast asleep, all of us are seriously traveling.
Just how fast?
Well, it depends on a bunch of factors.
Firstly, your latitude on Earth--that is, how close you are to the equator--and the time of year make a difference. Actually, your travelocity [a word I just invented] is made up of four variables: the rotation of the Earth on its axis, the motion of the Earth around the Sun, the Sun's orbit about the center of the galaxy, and the motion of the whole galaxy.
All of this stuff taken into account, it ends up that as you and I lie in bed tonight [not together, per se, but you know what I mean…] we will be traveling at 900 kilometers a SECOND!
And all of this taking place in incredible silence.
Does that boggle your mind like it boggles mine?
Check out this real SPACED-OUT poem of mine → HERE.
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Good poem, I like it!
ReplyDeleteIt is weird, the rotating thing, and the galaxies all receding (from what?). We need some good science fiction writers again to ponder all the repercussions. The new ones are all into dystopias. (gee I wonder why?!!!)
This might explain why I’m exhausted after a (supposedly) good night’s sleep.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, it is all amazing and I love the word “travelocity.”
I also love those words “my scared.”
If I may post the lyrics to Monty Python's Galaxy Song:
ReplyDeleteJust remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.(I hate to burst your bubble, but the travel website Travelocity stole your word, went back in time a few years and applied it to their own nefarious plot.)
Do you watch Doctor Who, Cip? I recite this bit from the first episode of the new series often:
ReplyDelete"Do you know like we were saying, about the earth revolving? It's like when you're a kid, the first time they tell you that the world's turning, and you just can't quite believe it cuz everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at 67000 miles an hour. And I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go... That's who I am."
And I can feel it.