Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
Revolving at 900 miles an hour
It’s orbiting at 19 miles a second,* so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of most our power
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day*
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It’s 100,000 light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thick
But out by us, it’s just 1,000 light years high
We’re 30,000 light years from galactic central point
We go ’round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know
11 million miles a minute,
and that’s the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth
The circumference of the Earth at the equator is 25,000 miles. The Earth rotates in about 24 hours. Therefore, if you were to hang above the surface of the Earth at the equator without moving, you would see 25,000 miles pass by in 24 hours, at a speed of 25000/24 or just over 1000 miles per hour.
Butterworth, P. & Palmer, D. (1997, April 1). Speed of the Earth’s Rotation. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Retrieved March 26, 2012 from http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970401c.html
National Academy of Sciences. (n.d.). Our Energy Sources: The Sun. Retrieved March 23, 2014 from http://needtoknow.nas.edu/energy/energy-sources/the-sun/
Fraknoi. A. (2007). How Fast Are You Moving When You Are Sitting Still? Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Retrieved April 16, 2015 from http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/publications/tnl/71/howfast.html
Butterworth, P. (1998, February 2). Stars in Our Galaxy. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Retrieved November 21, 2012 from http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980202g.html
Christian, E. & Safi-Harb, S. (1998, March 17). Size of the Milky Way. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Retrieved December 7, 2013 from http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980317b.html
Skywise Unlimited. (n.d.). The Milky Way. Western Washington University. Retrieved November 1, 2014 from http://www.wwu.edu/depts/skywise/a101_milkyway.html
“[A]stronomers estimate that the disk in the vicinity of the Sun is relatively thin—‘only’ 300 pc thick….”*
Chaisson, E. & McMillan, S. (2002). Astronomy Today, Fourth Edition. Retrieved June 8, 2014 from
http://astronomy.nju.edu.cn/~lixd/GA/AT4/AT423/HTML/AT42303.htm
Nemiroff, R. & Bonnell, J. (1995, September 8). Astronomy Picture of the Day: September 8, 1995. NASA. Retrieved March 16, 2015 from http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap950908.html
Hackworth, M. (n.d.). The Milky Way. Idaho State University Department of Physics. Retrieved June 12, 2010 from http://www.physics.isu.edu/~hackmart/milkyway.pdf