How fast is the Earth moving in space?

Sitting at health home or in a cafe, do you think you are still? However, relative to the Sun, to the center of the Milky Way, to neighboring galaxies and also to clusters of galaxies in the local universe, we are moving at full speed.

Even if at first glance we don't really notice, our little planet blue and therefore us with it, we move very quickly in space. In the space of a second, you have already traveled tens of kilometers in the Solar system. But that's not all: we are moving in the galaxy and it is sinking across theuniverse local…

How fast is the Earth spinning?

First, let's see our displacement on the surface of the Earth relative to its center. In mainland France, due to the tectonic plates, we travel an average of one centimeter per year to the east. Africa, for its part, rises 2 centimeters per year to the north. But the record returns to the Pacific plate which advances about 10 centimeters per year to the northwest.

Other movement to take into account: the rotation of the Earth on itself. To the latitudes from France, it is about 1,100 kilometers per hour. At the poles, it drops to just 3 kilometers per hour while at theEcuador (40,000 kilometers in 24 hours), it reaches 1,600 kilometers per hour. Note that our planet spins more slowly on itself than it did hundreds of millions of years ago.

What is the speed of the Earth around the Sun?

Around Sun, it goes much faster. As everyone knows, the period of revolution from our health home planet is 365 days and 6 hours. A year therefore to complete orbit elliptical around the Sun (an almost circular circuit), about 940 million km long. In other words, the Earth and all of us with it, are sinking at 107,000 kilometers per hour on average (29.78 kilometers per second). We thus travel no less than 2.6 million kilometers per day.

How fast are we moving in the Milky Way?

But it is not finished. Earth, like all the other bodies of the Solar system, revolves around his star the Sun … which moves around the galactic bulb, alongside hundreds of billions of other stars. It therefore takes about 230 million years to circle our galaxy (the Sun is located around 26,000 light years from the center of our galaxy whose diameter is 100,000 light years). Since it was born, 4.6 billion years ago, the Sun has already made 20 revolutions. According to sources, his speed average in the Milky Way oscillates between 720,000 kilometers per hour (200 km / s) and 900,000 kilometers per hour (250 km / s).

How fast are we moving through the local universe?

Finally, our galaxy and all the others move in the cosmos. The Milky Way and its neighbor Andromeda Galaxy – located about 2.5 million light years away – attract each other. We rush towards it at around 400,000 kilometers per hour (112 km / s). At this rate, the two galaxies are expected to collide in 3 to 4 billion years – a fusion which will give birth to the Androlactea.

Nothing is stationary. Our cluster of galaxies local also moves relatively to others. We thus travel each hour some 2.1 million kilometers in the direction ofcluster of galaxies of the Virgin. And the immense group of galaxies travels across the great galactic continent to which we belong: Laniakea.

Note that the values ​​indicated vary a little according to the sources and may still change with the progress of the observations.

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