Eli5: how do we know how fast the earth is moving in space?

412 viewsOtherPlanetary Science

How can we measure how fast the earth moves around the sun, or how fast the earth is spinning, without having some stationary point outside of the movement/rotation from which to observe and measure it?

In: Planetary Science

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

We know that our distance to the sun is 149.6 million kilometers.

From that we can calculate the circumference of its orbit, which is about 940 million kilometers.

That divided by the time it takes the earth to make one full round gives us a speed of 107,200 km/h or ~30 km/s.

Which is still relatively slow, considering that our entire solar system is orbiting the center of the galaxy at the mindboggling speed of 720,000 km/h.

Hold on to your butts!

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