How Fast Is 1 5 Million MPH?

We don't perceive speed in miles per hour or any other units. We perceive speed in relation to the size of the object moving. Proof? Sure! We see a little gnat zooming around so fast we can hardly follow him and we say "he's flying fast!" He might be moving 3 mph. We see a car on the highway moving 5 mph and we say "Get off the road, slowpoke!" He's moving almost twice as fast as the gnat. What gives here? Well the gnat is moving maybe 30 times his own body length in a second, while the car is moving its own length in three or four seconds. That's the concept of scale speed. Let's apply that to the earth and compare it to an old 33 and a third RPM record. If they were the same diameter and we put them side by side, we'd see the record turning 33 plus times a minute, just over once per two seconds. And the earth would spin once per day. Well that's 24 hours times 60 minutes per hour or 1/1440th of a single RPM. The 33 and a third record spins 47,995 times faster than the vinyl record. Is that fast or slow? It's VERY slow, isn't it. How do we determine that? Scale speed and RPM determines speed, not measuring how many miles per hour the rim moves. Let us begin our trip to the twilight zone by mentally reducing the Milky Way Galaxy to the size of an automobile. And to make the most extreme case, let's assume it is moving at a speed hundreds of times faster than its actual motion through space, the speed of light. That IS the speed limit, isn't it? At that magnitudes too high velocity, this car will travel its own length in 100,000 years (the Milky Way Galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter, that is, for light to travel from one rim to the opposite rim, it would take 100,000 years). In order for the Milky Way Galaxy to move its own diameter through space at the speed of light, it would take 100,000 years! Would that be fast? Or damned slow? It gets much worse. Because the galaxy isn't moving at the speed of light. It's moving 1.5 million miles per hour. The speed of light in a vacuum is 186,282 miles per second, times 60 seconds in a minute, times 60 minutes in an hour equals 670 million, 615 thousand, 200 miles per hour. 670,615,200 miles per hour is the speed of light. We're moving only 1.5 million miles per hour. So if you divide 670,615,200 by 1,500,000, you see that we are moving 447.08 times slower than the speed of light. That means you have to multiply that 100,000 years to move one diameter through space by 447.08 to get the number of years our galaxy actually takes to move its own diameter. That is 44.708 million years! Now let's scale that down to human terms. The galaxy is represented by an automobile, and we're standing together 20 feet from the automobile talking about whether it's moving or not. Some of you know what's coming already. That automobile is moving, but it will take 44.708 million years to move one car length! Can any instrument on earth detect that it is moving at all? Won't we stand there looking at it for a half hour or so, agree it's parked and go about our other business? Yeah, I think so. The big numbers blinded us to the truth. For an object the size of the Milky Way Galaxy 1.5 million miles per hour is parked. Essentially zero.

Note: the correct fraction of the speed of light the Milky Galaxy moves is 1/477th, not 1/700 as stated in the video.

1.5 million mph, that’s real fast. Compared to the speed of light, 670 million mph, it’s boring slow. But even at the speed of light it takes about 8 minutes for sunlight to get here. Gives you an idea of how large the solar system is.

That is probably the coolest video I have seen on the subject. Awsome visualisation!

A serious question back when steam locomotion was first being developed was whether or not humans could possibly survive speeds in excess of 30mph.

"If the Earth is orbiting the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour, if the solar system orbits Sagittarius A* (look it up) at 225,000 miles per hour, if the Milky Way Galaxy speeds toward the Great Attractor at 1.5 million miles per hour, why is Polaris in the same spot forever?" Answer: Space is BIG!!! REALLY BIG!!! There, I just saved you 13 minutes. ;) P.S. You have a soothing voice and a pleasant, laid back delivery style I quite enjoyed.

I think flat earther people, are fully aware the earth is round. They’re just trying to be different. Like a kid changing their hair color, cloths style, etc in high school to get noticed. lol

This would explain new 52 Jay Garricks speed very well.

>why is Polaris in the same spot forever? That's where your mistake is. Polaris is NOT in the same spot forever. First, there is Earth precession, which causes the axis of rotation to drift. As a result, position of Polaris relative to the axis changes slowly. Second, there is proper motion of Polaris.

Converting it to Plank time would be an interesting exercise......

scale!

Great video, I was thinking of covering exactly the same point, now it would be redundant :)