So, a car against asphalt it’s pretty easy determinining the speed.
But when someone says a spaceship, for example Voyager, travels at about 61.5 kkm/h. What speed are we comparing against? According to Google, Earth rotates at the equator at about 1.5 kkm/h. So if we said that we compare Voyager speed vs Quito speed and assuming angle of Voyager vs Quito is 90 degrees then that should be +- 1.5 kkm/h?
And Earth itself is also according to Google running around the sun at a clip of about 107 kkm/h so that would mean that at some points Voyager is doing -40 kkm/h vs Earth.
Just standing “still” in the Universe some shit would be moving really really fast compared to me so where do we flip reference points?
edit: lost a couple of ks
In: Planetary Science
There is no “standing still in the universe” at all. speed is always relative. For random news snippets, it doesn’t usually matter what number they use so they can pick whatever they want to compare with.
If you’re a scientist doing something where the number actually matters, you just choose something to measure with and stay consistent.
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