Place a Basketball on the ground (sun)
Pace off 85 feet
Place a BB on the ground (earth)
Place a grain of sand 2 1/2” away (moon)
How Fast Are You Moving When You Are Sitting Still?
The Earth Is spinning On It’s Axis.
How fast is it going?
Our planet rotates on its axis once a day.
The circumference of the Earth is 25,000 miles, and it rotates once every 24 hours.
A point near the equator of the Earth moves at close to 1,000 miles per hour.
The speed is a little less the farther you are north or south of the equator.
The Earth Is Orbiting The Sun.
How fast is it going?
The Earth revolves around the Sun once a year.
The center of the orbit is at about 93 million miles away,
and the full orbital path is close to 600 million miles.
To go around this immense circle in one year takes a speed of 66,000 miles per hour.
The Sun Is Moving Through Our Galaxy.
How fast is it going?
The Milky Way Galaxy is a spiral galaxy, about 100,000 light-years across,
and it contains over 200 billion stars.
The closest other star to our sun (Proxima Centauri), is 25 thousand billion miles away.
The Earth travels along with our sun through our galaxy at 483,000 miles per hour.
It takes our solar system 230 million years
to travel all the way around the Milky Way (one “galactic year”).
Since the Sun and the Earth first formed, they have circled the Galaxy 20 times.
In all of recorded human history,
we have barely moved in our long path around the Milky Way.
The Milky Way Galaxy Is Traveling Through The Universe.
How fast is it going?
The Milky Way does not sit still,
our entire Galaxy is moving through the universe at 1.3 million miles per hour.