How fast are we moving when 'standing still'?

Hi guest,

how can you see my tongue? LOL! Is it my 'English' way of putting things?

jfmfit

And to what inertial frame of reference are you measuring?

Hello Anonymous Hero,

you sound far too clever for me to talk to! LOL!

To be honest, even if it makes me seem foolish and 'fick', I do not understand your question really. If its any help I thought of me standing on earth. It feels as if I am not moving. But thinking about it, I must be moving in fact, as the Earth spins etc.

I would be interested in your opinion if you can find time to explain please?

Great link, and a Good Answer vote for you

Ditto.

Hi v1sor

Great link for a wonderfully simple explanation of our motion thru space!

A good answer click for you...

Just read the link. One of the clearest explications of the relativity of our sphere of existence I have ever read.

You got my vote!

j.

Hello Anonymous Hero,

I can't read all your post as I had a seizure half an hour ago and it screws my vision up. It will clear in its own time.

I used the Earth as a starting point, so imagine you are on the Earth. I do not know how fast the Earth is moving in the Milky-Way, or, the speed of the cosmos around us. I was slowly recalling how I worked it out last night (UK time-GMT) but, after the fit I can hard think straight at all now.

I think, but am not sure, I brought into the equation, days, and years. I am sorry but I cannot recall anything else.

I am not able to view the site you list but, will later. I know I took no account of the speed the whole cosmos is moving after the 'BIG BANG'. If I take our personal speed on earth, with nothing else brought to the equation, we travel at about 1000 MPH. My mind is not working anymore, so I will have to get back to you.

Where are you in the time-scale. Which country ..............part of the world?

jfmfit

Yuck! I am sorry to hear about that. That can be a frustrating experience. Glad to hear you have returned to normal.

I live in Florida, USA (across the Pond, as you say), just south of the Kennedy Space Center. So, I am 6 hours behind you (I'm on Eastern Standard Time) by the clock.

Hello Anonymous Hero,

it is kind of you to reply with your 'address'. Sounds a great place to live. Can you see any Rocket launches? Almost all my family live in or around Texas. New Mexico and Kansas, so thinks they are probably on the same time as you plus an hour.

Take care yourself,

jfmfit

Absolutely! We pour out of our workplace with every launch. I can see them quite well from my house, too. The Shuttle is the big one, but the Atlas and others put on a great show. Sometimes you hear the engines. Night launches rock!

You can hear the Shuttles twin sonic booms when they return. It is very loud and shakes the whole house. I will miss those when they retire the Shuttle.

We live 8 miles from the beach and it is a wonderful place to watch a launch because the launch pads are just north and appear to be over the water (ocean).

It is beautiful here and we love it.

Texas is one hour behind us.

Regards,

AH

Hello again Anonymous Hero,

just to say I am fully aware of all the goings on in and on the body. Its the wider Universe I am not up to date with.

jfmfit

Hello Anonymous Hero,

I thank you for your explanations, and hope you did not take my reply about the body, in umbrage.

I feel a little better now and have replied to 'MrChavy', I think is his name. If you could find time to read what I sent to him in reply to what he posted, it will explain why I was a little wide of the mark with my answer of 68000 miles.

Wishing you well...........

jfmfit.

Frame of reference might be in relation to where you are standing. Lets say you are standing on Jupiter. Jupiter spins fast like a top but for me being 45 years old, I would have just barely experienced one revolution around the sun. So you see where you are plays a factor in how fast you are going.

Another more pertinent location would be you standing on the equator as opposed to standing at the North Pole. You might think because you are standing on the same planet and the Earth is rotating at 100 mph (I don't know exactly that is just for instance.) on the Equator that you would still be traveling at 100 mph at the North Pole, when in actuality a mile at the North Pole is shorter then a mile at the equator.

Hello Janissaries,

I posted the question about speed. Although I did not mention it I did actually mean as if you were on the equator. And, by the way,...........The Earth spins at plus or minus a few MPH.......1000MPH, 16000 KPH.

Even though I screwed up on this answer as I did not frame it correctly, I, it seems am not the only one to find this interesting?

jfmfit

One is passing through the universe at the speed of light. All those photons you see passing by are actually stationary.

wow... wat cwarner7 said is something really new to me... is this a new idea or it's in some existing theory??

cwarner7_11 and all, this is not meant to offend anyone, please don't take it that way.

cwarner7_11 said:

"One is passing through the universe at the speed of light."

Actually not.

Quote from above link: look here

Light travels at the unimaginably fast pace of 670 million miles per hour or 1.09 billion km/hr. and how fast is the Milky Way Galaxy moving? The speed turns out to be an astounding 1.3 million miles per hour (2.1 million km/hr)!

So, light is moving about 515 times faster than we are moving through the universe.

We are just poking along.

The rest of reply is to everyone in general.

And to all who read this reply:

Sorry to say, but there are many on the www who see an answer such as:"One is passing through the universe at the speed of light." and accept it, when the answer is actually:

One is passing through the universe at over 515 times slower than the speed of light.

Then they talk to a friend or co-workers and state the wrong numbers. Thus the world has a few more walking around with the wrong/incorrect answers, because those people probably won't go research to see if they heard the correct answer to start with.

I try really, really hard to make sure I research any answer I receive from anyone to see if it is close to being correct. On this forum, any forum, or in person. Doesn't matter, I really try to check it out.

I really don't like someone to tell me:"Wow, you must be stupid to believe that (whatever it may be; that is wrong), where did you hear that? Didn't you research it before opening your mouth?"

But, as I go through life, I notice many people do not care if they give wrong info out. I don't know what causes that. Do you (anyone)??

I am interested in reading replies on why others (whomever they be) think it is okay to give wrong info that does mislead others.

I am sure (probably) that the intent is not to mislead others, but without researching an answer before giving it, that is what you are doing. People on here do expect to receive a correct answer more often than not. I know I don't ask questions and want hokey answers.

We (all of us) need to make a conscious effort to only give as correct of an answer as is possible with some research behind it, so that the people who do read that answer don't receive the wrong one and repeat it to someone else.

Anyone agree with me on that or not?

Ken

if you can't know the frame of reference, how then can you know "we" are not passing through some universe at the speed of light? As is it is really pertinent one way or t'other.

I don't think it's correct!

Everybody has their way of thinking. For some its wrong for others its correct. You can't really reach the conclusion till you test it. And the only way is to tell the others, with a hope of correcting it.

I am sure people on CR4 have other work to do. We just can't devote all the time for finding the perfect answer. So, the trick is just answer what you think of it. Of courese there are experts who are always ready to correct it, & that way you reach the correct answer rapidly & the same time you know, where you went wrong?

And, actually sometimes the most stupid answers give a completely different direction to the topic, for GOOD.

Again that doesn't mean you purposely give wrong & stupid answers.

Hello pc,

And, actually sometimes the most stupid answers give a completely different direction to the topic, for GOOD.................I copied this from your last post. Of course, this is the way 'normal' discussion works, right?

I set this question, but as you will see if you have enough time to read my reply to MrChevy, I think was his name, I thought of the question when I was fifteen and I actually finished school effectively at 14, because of my illness. I will check before I set another question, sorry to you and to everyone else for not researching the correct answer before I set my question. It was a foolish thing to do.

So I was not as bright as I thought! And the post also explains why I was a little wide of the mark! I cannot recall who put the link to the Astronomers site but, it was very easy to understand. I now know we are moving at several hundred thousand mile per hour!

Take care, jfmfit

jfmfit,

In the context of thinking and learning to think, as essential to engineering or to you who I gather is largely housebound, PC is dead wrong and I don't mind saying so.

Knowledge is not something we acquire by just tossing off an answer and hoping it is right or near right or that someone more knowledgeable will pop in with the correct answer which without a properly based material system of determining truth we cannot determine truth.

Again, methodologically PC is dead wrong and that sort of notion, as you can probably tell from my writing gets me really mad. There is objective reality and truth. It is not a matter of everybody just casually having their own truth.

As for your question. It was a good one. Don't back off. I knew almost instinctively it raised the question of "relative to what" since all things in all of the universe are in motion. Nonetheless, you posing it made me think about all the spacial elements involved in the universe.

Looked at inversely, so to speak, all things here on earth are also in motion when you start the descent into the molecular, and then down to the atomic and sub-atomic levels.

I also knew the answer about speed of light was dead wrong. Just consider the images returned from the Hubble space telescope or from various pieces of hardware traveling out into space and sending back signals which themselves travel at the speed of light.

Your given speed for us was not that far off. Your method must have been correct.

Why not use your time to become a Stephen Hawking who although chair bound still produces some remarkable stuff. Your question suggests you are already headed that way.

j.

Hello Jack Jersawitz,

I am not answering your post in order of your ref', just so as you know................

I have always had Epilepsy but 'nocturnal'. 15 years ago I had my first day-time fit and, after that I could not drive and work and, I had a 100 mile round trip so, I could not continue to work. At the same time my medication was causing terrible side-effects which was actually worse than the Epilepsy.

Even now, I am out there, whether its going to do some shopping, or visiting the Science Museum. But I cannot go alone, I need an 'escort'............no not that type of escort!

My Dad built 'Whalers' pointy ended boats used at first for whaling, then the same boats were used as 'life-boats' on some ships after the whaling had died out a little. That is how my Dad explained it anyhow. After that he did an Apprenticeship for Building and Decorating. When that was slow, my Grand-Dad taught him how to make and mend shoes and, my Dad actually had a 'Snobbing' shop for about 4 years. If you are not familiar 'snobbing' is the term used for a shoe mender. The shoe mender is a snobber.

The reason I mention all this is because my Father saw the world around him, and I can't think of the right words now, but he thought and I also think the same, that things which are manufactured should look as they do as a part of there function. Function follows form and visa versa. Being the son of a Dad who knew what he was doing when building anything (don't all dads? LOL!) But, ref' my Dad, it became second nature for me to go to work at the weekends and, well, just 'absorb' all the various methods and ways he did things. I was fitting Conduit for wiring when I was ten and, designing drive-ways, and fitting out kitchens, fitting all the bits and pieces to do with the plumbing to sinks and baths and toilets prior to Dad fitting them. But when I was a lot younger he was a hard task master. I remember when I was 3 he asked me to remove the inner sections of one of the old Tea Caddies so he could convert it to a shoe-box. I was not strong enough and, he grabbed it after five minutes and shouted "that is not the way boy". As I said, a hard task master! But, I have followed in his shoes and always look at something, whether it be something you can hold in your hand, or part of a shopping centre, and ask WHY! Why is it that shape/size/position etc. What does that bit support? I was never considered clever enough to be taught any Languages at school as, I was always off with a fit or Eczema etc. But, something which really opened my eyes was the Latin used to name plants where I first worked in a fish-farm. Even at that young age it was my duty to explain 'how to' when people who had bought pools and fish and plants etc, asked for help and advice. I thought it amazing a whole flower and everything to do with it could be described in just a few letters of Latin. try the same in English and you are talking several sentences.

Jack, you write a very considered letter! I like the way you try sooo hard NOT to hurt my feelings as you write. I appreciate it, really. With ref' to the speed question I posted, I screwed up. I always, and I mean always check something is correct before I reply and give advice. My bosses, two Brothers, and most all people I have known have asked advice of me. (I was known as the Doctor at work, because I was able to find an answre to anything). I don't give a reply there and then, until I can check things out. Then I will give my three penny-worth. I am really annoyed with myself I did not check the posted question out to get the final answer. But, as I think 'pc' said, even a wrong answer can induce correspondence and discussion, which is pretty much why this site is here, right? It is odd you should mention atoms, or was it molecular stuff? The thing I most enjoyed was helping my Niece when she was at University. She wanted to be an ME, until she realised they dealt with dead bodies! But, I was advising her as she faxed and phoned me for help regarding atoms and their valences. I found it really intersting. I recall it when my brother in law asked me if I really understood what I was discussing in detail about molecular engineering. I said "of course I don't"! But, of course I do did and do. It is not something I could have talked about off the top of my head.

Take care Jack.............

jfmfit, (John)

Hello Jack Jersawitz,

"Why not use your time to become a Stephen Hawking who although chair bound still produces some remarkable stuff. Your question suggests you are already headed that way".

Re: your last remark..................I pay for compliments. Just send your address! LOL!

I wish I had 1% of Stephen Hawkins intellect. I am often accused of being 'pedantic' because I have to explain things so precisely. Pity I didn't do that with the speed question I posted? Still it has brought a lot of replies...............even if I did not want to be replied to like that!

Take care,

jfmfit

Hello MrChevy

I set the question. At the time I was fifteen only, and was confined to a hospital bed, so could go on only the stuff I new. I really cannot remember now, but my answer came out at 68000 miles an hour. Give or take a thousand, it seems I only brought the speed the Earth is spinning, and the time it takes to go round the sun, into the equation.

I know now we are moving very much faster! But, at fifteen, having left school to go into hospital, it turns out for over five years. I was just trying to keep sane, so set myself all kinds of questions. When I got home at 20, I could not start work as my Eczema was too bad, (the reason for my going into hospital was an immune deficiency).

I thank you for saying what you did in your last post above. I could not agree more with all you say. I am known as a geek as I am usually very careful when giving explanations. But, I am limited, as we all are, to our personal knowledge. Thats where the web comes in handy. There is people like you and others that can be relied upon to give links where it is too difficult a question to answer so the recipient understands, you know?

I heard the other day someone state on television that we sneezed at 6,000,000 miles an hour. How ridiculous! There would be a shortage of noses if that was correct. LOL!

I am really pleased I found this site as, for the most part people are kind in the way they reply. I live in the UK and I know there is quite a lot of confusion over various simple things that us 'English' phrase things in a different way. I mentioned that because I know most of the people and 'experts' on the site are from the States, and though I have replied with my expertise to certain questions, the way we do things and the way you do (if you are from the USA)..............sorry I made an assumption there), are different. It is often down to nomenclature. I am also answering from my 'historic' point of view as I have not worked for 14 years, so products and the way things get done are different, even in the UK.

I visited the site link for Astronomers, is it? And I found it and its explanations very easy to understand. It seems we are moving just a little.............Like, several hundred thousand miles an hour faster than I had figured out in my teens! I find this stuff really interesting though.

jfmfit

Hello jfmfit,

It wasn't about your post at all. It wasn't to one person, it was just about how I see things. We all see the same thing different, that is part of life.

Read the replies. There are those who state:"Leave an answer, even if it is wrong. Someone else will correct it (they hope)."

Someone says:"My car will go 165MPH." Many people will believe that. Not me, my mind doesn't work that way. I want to know:RPM engine capable of turning, transmission ratios used, rearend ratio, tire diameter. Only then can I do the math and "see" if the answer is close to being true.

If they were to tell me their car had: 6,500RPM/1 to 1 trans ratio/3.73 rearend ratio/24" diameter tires, I would enter it into this formula and see:

RPM/RearRatio/TransRatio*TireDiameter/336.13524=MPH

That if the engine had enough horsepower to pull to 6,500 RPM in high gear, then the car could be capable of going 124.4 MPH, well short of their boastful 165MPH.

Working at an automotive machine shop, I have heard my share of statements like that. Show them the math and they still don't believe. Needless to say, I don't press the issue.

On here, or any forum on the www, we all take our chances on the answers being somewhere near correct. We also have to accept that there are users on this or any other forum that just don't care if their answer is correct or not. Guess it is something like IQ. Using the word "average" means that 50% of the people are below average IQ, that about 85% are average IQ or lower. But a large percentage of that 85% of the people are what keeps the country and businesses going.

Guess I am stupid for thinking anyone cares what answers users leave. It's all a big joke to everyone, no one cares if they read a halfway correct answer on here except me I suppose. But that is life.

For your standing still part. If the sun is 93 million miles away on an average, then twice that to get the diameter of its (the Earth's) track gives us 186 million miles x pi of 3.14 gives us 584,040,000.0000 miles and dividing that by 365 days in the year gives us 1,600,109.5890 miles and dividing that by the 24 hours in the day give us the figure of 66,671.2329MPH that we are buzzing around the sun (on an average). So your 68,000MPH is pretty darn close.

As far as the Earth turning, yes, at the equator where the circumference is about 24,000 miles, then divide by 24 hours and get the Earth itself is spinning about 1,000MPH, but ONLY at the equator. The further away from the equator we get, going North or South, then the slower it is turning (surface speed).

Again, my posts like this aren't to antagonize anyone, hopefully more will see this forum as a place to have pride in the answers given, that they are correct, especially it being an engineers forum.

Enjoy,

Ken

Hello MrChevy,

I once again say sorry for not checking I was actually correct. And also, thinking about the kind of (and I do not know the technical terms) frame for my question. I did have just a pencil only at the time I figured it out. And, as you say, it is a lot nearer than you could accept from an 'average'. I think I worked out how many days and hours/minutes/seconds there was in an Earth year, including the extra 6 hours for the exact year length. (Allowing for the real year length of 365 and a quarter days). I did the same for the spin of the Earth. I forgot to mention in my post "imagine you are sitting in a chair at the equator".

As you may see if you look at my post to Jack Jersawitz, I always check for the truthful and correct answer or reply when asked a question. I am sorry I did not this time. Having said that, it does seem to have provoked a lot of posts. I am not the only one who thinks this an interesting post.............even if I did get it wrong. But the truth will out right?

Take care MrChevy.

jfmfit

Hi John,

I don't think any of the people replying in this thread are thinking the answer you gave is wrong. Most of the posts just seem to be about how correct answers are and you shouldn't take it as if they were thinking your answer was a long ways off. It isn't/wasn't. Not something I would want to tackle with a pencil like you did!

Yes, keep asking those questions, you seem to generate a thread that many want to contribute to.

Take care... and make sure you laugh at the funny answers. Laughter is sometimes the best medicine for us.

Ken

Hello 'Mr' MrChevy,

tar for your kind post. It is not other post-ers I am annoyed with, it is myself! I should have checked and I didn't. I tell you though, from where I live in the UK, I can see many a child who just is not and will not be able to work things out 'on the back of a cigarette packet! None of my nieces or nephews can give a mathematical reply without using a calculator.

Take care,

jfmfit

jfmfit

Absolutely!!

As I have said before there are people coming here for answers that are in newly developing countries or some that were still mostly undeveloped and mostly peasant (No insult intended).

Some of these folks are being thrust into industries that are themselves raw and poorly funded and everybody is just working it out.

Hence, some of the questions involve materials and practice that present serious potential danger.

A wrong answer can get someone killed. This is not that sort of issue but many are.

I am one hundred percent with you MrChevy!

j.

You get my vote.

With assumption that the photons are moving in parallel this is great example of reference frame. In this case one is making the photons the frame of reference and by comparison everything else is moving at the speed of light. Very interesting concept.....

THANKS!

Indeed.

I'm fairly often stunned by the arrogance of the flat earth crowd, who find answers like that in post number 10 lacking, "wrong", or trivial. To each his own reality, I suppose. No one is so certain that his answer is "correct" as a fool.

V1sor,

Just curious.

If informed that photons are individual particles of light, in what is referred to as lights particle state (For you and others I state it that way because I have questions as to light in its so called wave state which I understand to be, even if not so intended, as a different category of being for light) and that as light they travel at the speed of light (Not being cute just trying to untangle what you are saying), would you change your statement?

Probably not politically correct to do so but I am just trying to understand the mindset from which you pose your statement.

j.

Howdy jfmfit

CR4 is a great place to find good answers to your questions. Occasionally, you may receive posts of answers that seem a little obtuse or off-the-wall but those can also engage us in further thoughts on a subject.

You sound like an intelligent and curious person seeking answers for what goes on around us and this a good place to ask those questions.

Curiosity may have "killed the cat" but if it wasn't for our natural human curiosity, we'd still be living in caves and munching on dead carcasses we found.

Cheers to you my friend and keep on questioning!

Hello snygolfgs,

and a big UK Howdy to you!

I wasn't sure if the last but one letter in your name was 'a' or 'q', so pasted it.

I am not taking anyones remark personally. And I suppose it has promoted a lot of posts. I think in general people who post all the time are pretty good and kind people. They care what I/you think and how their question is taken?

Take care to you

jfmfit

Closer to home at the equator you would be traveling at 1037.55 Mph i.e earth diameter 7926.28 miles at equator multiplied by Pi divide 24 hours etc... As your latitude increases towards two poles it would decrease. As for orbiting around the sun if the exact path of the orbit is known it can be worked out but i fear I'll be in retirement before that.

Hello madness,

At 15 I knew the size of the Earth .......'roughly', and did bring Pi into use. I just had the Earths diameter a few miles out, thats all. I did actually mean to say "at the equator" but forgot.

I think if you really wanted to you could figure a path for the sun. I did not worry about the path. I worked with the years length. That is our Earths year. At 365 and a quarter days.

Take care........

jfmfit

Interesting thought! A path for the sun. Of course then we are talking about a path for the entire solar system.

Interesting because every bloody thing in the universe is in motion, hence has a path.

So again the issue, path, or paths, relative to what. It would be kind of like what had to be done by Copernicus, Newton, etc. They worked out the motions of the major objects of the solar system relative to the sun.

A path for the entire system relative to the rest of the universe would entail mapping the specific motions of all bodies, stars, gaseous bodies, etc., relative to each other and putting numbers to it.

I wonder if anyone has done that. Seems someone would have done.

Writing the just above has got me musing. We describe all things like speed, distance etc., in terms relative to earth, i.e., seconds, minutes, inches, feet, miles, even the speed of light, e.g., 186,000 miles per second.

Of course light speed is the only absolute in the universe. But how would we communicate, if we came across extraterrestrial sentient beings from outside this solar system or galaxy our material conception of that speed insofar as that conception's expression is earthbound; so to speak?

One thought. We could diagram how we draw our spacial measurements from the earth. We could diagram our time measurements as drawn from earth's rotations.

My bet would be that these kind of conceptions are what led Einstein to relativity as a general conception for all things.

We can't ask him but I wonder if anybody has ever gone through his papers consciously trying to find the key kernel from which all the rest flowed?

j.

"Writing the just above has got me musing. We describe all things like speed, distance etc., in terms relative to earth, i.e., seconds, minutes, inches, feet, miles, even the speed of light, e.g., 186,000 miles per second."

Of course we do. It would be kind of silly trying drive the speed limit in town if we had an absolute speedometer for the car. Turning right might not be right after all.

So we set points of reference that are meaningful to the task at hand.

Yeah Anonymous Hero!

And by taking that paragraph out of context, the context of wondering how that subjective outlook and purpose might be overcome should we meet up with folks from outside our solar system and also my muse as to possibilities that what it might have been that led to Einstein's relativity theories, we miss my entire purpose.

j.

Okay. However, my point was any advanced civilization would understand that another civilization would view and make judgments based on their own frame of reference. We would not expect an alien civilization to use the metric system or have the Earth as the center of their universe.

Directly to your question of how we might overcome that; it is likely that one common reference point would be mathematics. Although the symbology would be different, the rules of the language would be the same.

I don't know/remember what line of thinking sparked Einstein to conceive the Theory of Relativity, but I am pretty sure it was written in some publication I read. I just can't recall where it was, but any book store or library would likely have something.

Pioneer 10 and 11, as well as the Voyager spacecraft carried such a message.

Voyager spaceships carried a message

From NASA: Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. With this example before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2-a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials.

On the 30 year anniversary last year, a NY Times Op-Ed, in which it is pointed out that "From Voyager's perch, the Sun is just another star, south of Rigel in the constellation Orion…" Also, Voyager I still signals, but its messages take 14 hours to reach Earth. Amazing.

A short discussion of "How do we talk to aliens?" Just food for thought.

"Also, Voyager I still signals, but its messages take 14 hours to reach Earth. Amazing."

The nearest star would take 4.3 years for that same message to get here! Voyager I is still pretty close to us.

Hello Jack Jersawitz,

with ref' to paths taken by certain terrestrial planets and stars............. and the exploration of the Solar system so far, most if not totally by the States.......

Would not the paths of various objects have been predicted to allow the Voyager missions?

I realise all this is pretty 'local' to the Earth when it is measured in Astronomical terms but, with the Voyager out there for so long, it would have to be programmed or have a means to 'see' and avoid abjects like Meteors and such............where possible anyway. What do you think?

jfmfit (John)

The spacecraft is sent on a trajectory that was planned well before liftoff.

During the mission the spacecraft will be sent small corrective commands en route, but these are just corrections and there are no provisions to alter course for unseen objects.

By definition, a meteor is an object that falls to Earth. In space, such objects are unmapped and statistically unlikely to cross paths with a spacecraft due to the vast, vast volume o space.

Hello Anonymous Hero,

I may have goten confused....................What are the lumps often just a few miles long, and often made mostly of ice that we see on earth every now and then?

jfmfit

Icebergs, when floating on water. A school snow-day when on land.

You are right. They would have had to plot the paths of any objects that might intersect that of Voyager hence have had to map at least those areas that would be near the Voyager path.

j.

Your mental horsepower was certainly strong and working if you worked the speed out to be 68,000 MPH and you were only off by about 3%. In the magnitude of those figures, you could say you were "right on".

Hello Bart@,

I, of course agree with everything you say!

As I have said in other post replies to this question, I always, but always check my facts before giving anyone the reply. The first mistake was not to frame the question correctly............It was down hill from there LOL! I appreciate your remarks towards me though, as I use just a pencil and paper. No calculator.

jfmfit

Thanks for the interesting post, jfmfit. It brings up issues in relativity. If you are interested in such things, we have Jory here at CR4, who is extremely knowledgeable on the subject: search for his posts and you'll find very interesting stuff.

At times like this, I always recommend the thousand meter solar system walk, in which you lay out the solar system to scale. If you use 1000 meters as the radius from sun to Pluto, then Earth is the size of a peppercorn. Reading about the walk is one thing, but actually doing it is another. When you walk back in toward the "sun" many of the planets will be impossible to find, if you don't mount them on paper cards or something to make them stand out.* Even in the scale of just our own small solar system centered around our very small star, in our own small galaxy, itself a fly spec in the universe... the scale is striking: our whole planet is a tiny spec surrounded by unfathomably immense emptiness.

An atom is, relatively, 100 times less dense. If the solar system seems incredibly empty, we ourselves are 100 times emptier.

* Of course in the real solar system, the planets are not in a neat little line. If you were to lay out the system more accurately, at the same scale, you'd need a two kilometer circle, within which the planets would be scattered. You could wander this space for a long long time without finding even the larger planets: a needle in a haystack is simple by comparison.

Hello Blink,

you write a very pertinent letter. I actually did as you explain about the planets to try and explain the simple one of where we are in space and, how far we are from the Sun. I recall using a 'bouncer' 'space-hopper' thing as the sun and, even then it was no where near big enough! I actually used marbles, tomatoes, grapefruit and cherry pips! And could use my garden at 20 metres.

Yes, I may have screwed up on this speed question I posted. (Please see the post reply I made to Jack Jersawitz.

I went to the link about Astronomy and found it really easy to understand. The real speeds are truly ming boggling!

jfmfit (John)

The figures in the song in the link below are not right but they touch on some of the parameters and it is also fun "And fun is Good". So says "The Cat In The Hat".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcTHBOjnUss

Maths is a joy in its perfection but the big problem is to make sure you have all the relevant parameters factored into the equation. Otherwise it is GI-GO, Garbage In – Garbage Out.

Often close enough is good enough for a practical workable solution.

BAB

Let us try a bit of a thought experiment. Let us assume a single object "free-falling" through a boundless void. To speak of motion or velocity or position is meaningless. We can assign any values we wish to these parameters, and they will be equally valid (or invalid, if you prefer), since there is no way to determine exactly what the motion is.

Now, let us introduce a second object into our boundless void. It may be possible to determine relative motion between the two objects. Let us say that we can "measure" the distance between the two objects, and determine that this distance changes between two subsequent measurements. Now, we can either define time as how long it takes the distance to change by some set amount, or we can define our unit of distance based on how much the distance has changed between measurements. But we can not really define an absolute value for velocity until we have some standard for measuring time and some standard for measuring distance. Perhaps in one of our objects we have some periodic object that can be used to define time, and perhaps we can use the size of our object as a standard of length. This object now becomes our "observer". Were we to try to evaluate relative motion from the perspective of the second object, we would have to assume that it, too, has identical clock and distance standards, or, at least, standards that can be mapped to correspond to our own standards.

Now, let us manipulate the units a bit, until we have defined the relative velocity between our two objects as being on the order of 186,000 miles per second. Let us then levitate to Object 2 and adjust our definitions of the standard clock and standard length such that from Object 2 we can also state that the relative velocity is 186,000 miles per second. From Object 1, we will name Object 2 a "photon". From Object 2, we will name Object 1 a photon. It would be nice if we could measure the change in velocity over time, from which we could generate a ratio of mass between Object 1 and Object 2, and then we could assign the value of "0" mass to the other object and feel more justified in calling it a photon.

Let us now introduce Object 3. Let us explore the situation in which Objects 2 and 3 are moving away from (or towards, if you chose) Object 1 at the same velocity. Since we have already defined Object 2 as a photon from the reference point of Object 1, and since we have decided only photons can achieve maximum velocity, obviously Object 3 must also be a photon. Or are we the photon and Objects 2 and 3 are the "stationary" objects?

If we add enough additional objects to our hypothetical universe to give us sufficient number of comparisons to result in statistically meaningful measures, we can start to distinguish between photons and other stuff. But all of our distinctions are based on our fundamental definitions of time and distance, which are based on the universal ratio we call the speed of light in a vacuum. Einstein promised us that no matter where we were or what our motion was, we would perceive this ratio as a constant. Of course, the speed of light is a constant only in a vacuum- it tends to slow down when it passes through some medium. Recent work at MIT and others have apparently actually brought light to a standstill, which means zero velocity. But anyone observing this light will "measure" the same velocity. Some time ago, I came across a statement by one of the mavens of relativity (I do not currently have a citation for this, but it appeared in a collection of papers published in the 1960's, the papers having been published in the 1950's) stating that the speed of light was the ratio of electrostatic to electrodynamic forces, whatever that might mean, but it sounds cleaner than the ratio of distance to time...But, essentially, any measure of anything is relative to the frame of reference in which it is made. Trying to extrapolate measurements made from earth to some universal frame of reference is going to require a whole lot more observations and information than we currently have.

In my daily life, I sometimes find it a whole lot easier to get by using the arbitrary frame of reference that fixes me as the center of the universe, and determines my relationship with other objects I encounter based on their relationship or motion with regards to my fixed position. This helps me avoid getting run over by a bus or colliding with a train. I acknowledge that the mathematics involved in trying to describe the "regular" motions of objects such as the sun, planets, stars, comets or what have you becomes extremely complicated, as the ancient earth-centric crowd finally had to acknowledge. I would never use this perspective to, say, design a bridge or a ship.

One issue I take with some of the analyses presented here is that they are considering only AVERAGE velocities. That is, someone sitting on the equator will move about the sun at the same speed as the earth only twice a day. The rest of the time, the velocity about the center of the earth will either add to or subtract from the individual's velocity about the sun, depending on whether it is night or day (or do I have that backwards- depending on whether it is day or night?). Likewise the velocity about the center of the Milky Way. The velocity of the Milky Way towards some distant point in space may or may not be variable as well. If one really wants to get accurate, then one must also account for the fact that the rotation of the earth about it's axis is chaotic, as is the motion of the earth about the sun, and most likely the motion of the solar system about the center of the galaxy.

Now, if we throw in this thing about the expansion of space, how do we know anything is moving at all???

Hello cwarner7 11,

wow....................that post is pretty heavy! You mention so many points. Some of which you answer and some you 'perceive'.

I would say it is likely, (though we will never know, because in our time frame we could never reach another 'colony' out in space) these other 'beings' would use a different measurement. Though it is all theory, and probably can never be proven as by the time we can reach 'anyone' out there we would be dead. We would have to be able to travel to (probably) the speed of light or faster? This is if our assumption is correct, that everything is moving away from us at the speed of light?

As I understand it (and thats stretching the point for sure!) the 'proven' 'facts' about photons, quarks etc, is just a huge guess? We well never be able to travel alongside a photon to 'measure' and 'see' any or all of these building blocks of the Universe.

I will leave it there as I am confusing myself and can't think straight..............

jfmfit

Mr. Warner,

You might look here for a good discussion explaining how science deals with the universal frame of reference. The section titled Moving Through the Universe addresses that motion.

You have written well.

Best Regards.

from the "Observers Handbook 1996" Royal Astronomical Soc of Canada. page 18, some astronomical and Pysical data.

orbital speed of earth -29.8 Km per second

Sun- solar velocity = 19.75 km per sec towards alpha[?] =18.07 h [sidereal location]

milky way galaxy [we are still a paid member] rotational speed [at Sun]=250 km sec

velocity relative to the 3K background about 600 km per sec towards 10 h, -20 degrees.

good answers in this topic. have fun.

Hi pretzel,

the detail you mention I knew nothing about, other than the spin of the Earth.

I worked this out when I was 15 with paper and pencil, and I am 57 now, so can't recall how I did it, but I know I worked it out in MPH and converted it in my head to Metric. The Earth speed seems familiar to me and may be close to my answer. I know I could only work it out with what I knew, speed of the Earth, time round the Sun basically. But I know I was probably about 9.6 km out with the known spin speed of the Earth. Which is why my end speed answer was about 1500 miles or Kilometres to much. The answer as far as it goes was nearer 66200 or something.

Of course that does not take into account the speed of the Milky Way etc. That speed must be tremendous at the peripheries of the Milky Way!