if the earth moves at over 60k MPH, why does it appear slow to astronauts? Is everything relative to the universe moving? And if so, how fast are you really going when floating in space at a standstill?
In: Physics
If you are talking about the rotation of the earth, it is indeed rather fast – but the Earth is also really big. From orbit, you don’t really see anything smaller than a country-sized region with the naked eye, and those don’t seem to go by that fast because they’re big and “zoomed out”. If an astronaut used some sort of telescope to zoom in on everyday objects on the surface of Earth, they would look like they were going by rather quickly.
If you are talking about the Earth moving around the sun, the astronauts are moving around the sun at about the same speed (as others have mentioned).
As for how fast you are going when ‘floating in space at a standstill’ it depends what you are comparing to. Movement is relative – meaning that you cannot discuss movement without saying what it is relative to (something that isn’t really obvious down here on Earth where all movement can be assumet to be relative to the Earth). Usually someone floating at “standstill” in space is actually in orbit around something (if you were actually at standstill relative to the closest planet, you’d start falling!), so how fast they are going would depend on their distance to and the mass of whatever they are orbiting.
Latest Answers