rotating

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

“Earth is also moving around the Sun at about 67,000 miles per hour.”http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970401c.html

“The energy we capture for use on Earth comes largely from the Sun or from nuclear forces local to our own planet. Sunlight is by far the predominant source, and it contains a surprisingly large amount of energy.”

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/

“Relative to the local standard of rest, our Sun and the Earth are moving at about 43,000 miles per hour (70,000 km/hr) roughly in the direction of the bright star Vega in the constellation of Lyra….”

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

“We can only see a few thousand stars at most with our unaided eyes. These are a mixture of stars which are nearby, and bright stars which are further away; but they are only a tiny fraction of the 100,000,000,000 stars in our own galaxy.”

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

“The disk of the Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter (one light year is about 9.5 x 10^15 meters).”

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

“The central bulge is about 16,000 light years thick.”

Skywise Unlimited. (n.d.). The Milky Way. Western Washington University. Retrieved November 1, 2014 from http://www.wwu.edu/depts/skywise/a101_milkyway.html

Original: But out by us, it’s just 3,000 light years wide.
“[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

“Of course, the edge on perspective represents the view from the vicinity of our Sun, a star located in the disk about 30,000 light years out from the center.”

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

“At this rate it takes us 240 million years to make one revolution around the galactic core.”

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

Originally, “12 million miles a minute.” However, the speed of light is actually about 671 million mph which is closer to 11 million miles per minute