A Fast Ride

When we watch the stars moving overhead as the hours pass tonight, we are really seeing is the Earthıs daily rotation about its axis reflected in the sky. In Vermont, the daily motion of the earth is spinning us at seven hundred miles an hour.

As the days pass, the stars drift a little to the west each succeeding night. The drift is slow, but steady. At about 10:00 tonight the Summer Triangle, which was overhead two months ago at this time, is now in the west, replaced by the Autumn Square (the Great Square of Pegasus.) Orion, and the stars of winter are now rising in the east. This is a reflection of the yearly revolution of the Earth around the Sun. The Earth, and all of us, are going around the Sun at eighteen miles a second!

There's more. The Sun with all its planets is spinning around the center of the galaxy at over a hundred miles a second.

All this dizzying motion! Why don't we feel any of it? Well, itıs like being in a plane, in which we walk around oblivious to the plane's motion. We only feel a change in motion - at take-off or landing, or when flying in heavy weather. Otherwise we don't notice that we're moving.

Whether in a plane or standing on the Earth we're just going along for the ride - a very fast ride.

(10/12/05)