You’ve Moved 3,728 Miles Since You Started Reading This 📖
Right now, as you’re sitting still, reading this sentence… You’re moving. A lot.
In the next 10 seconds, Earth will carry you about 186 miles (300 km) through space. That’s because our planet is orbiting the Sun at speeds of up to 18.82 miles per second (30.29 km/s). Even at its slowest, it still moves at 18.50 mi/s (29.29 km/s) — a difference of just 3%, caused by the elliptical shape of Earth’s orbit.
But Earth’s motion is only one layer of a much bigger journey.
The entire solar system — including you, right now — is orbiting the center of the Milky Way. The Sun is pulling us along at a staggering 124 miles per second (200 km/s). So in the time it took to read this far, we’ve traveled another 1,243 miles (2,000 km) through our galaxy.
And even the galaxy itself isn’t stationary.
The Milky Way, along with its neighboring galaxies in a cluster called the Local Group, is moving through space at around 373 miles per second (600 km/s). That means you’ve just covered another 3,728 miles (6,000 km) — all without lifting a finger.
Despite these incredible speeds, it would still take the solar system roughly 230 million years to complete a single orbit of the galaxy. And beyond that, the Milky Way itself continues drifting through the expanding universe.
So while you may feel still, you are constantly in motion —
part of an intricate system of orbits, drifting through the cosmos at unimaginable speed.
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