The speed of light travels at 186,000 miles per second, or 671,000,000 miles per hour. A light year is how far light travels at that speed, in one Earth year, which equals 5.878 trillion miles! Radio waves, in the vacuum of space, travel at the speed of light.
It will take radio waves around 26,000 Earth years to travel from our planet to the center of our galaxy, at a rate of 5.878 trillion miles per year.
The Earth rotates at a speed of 1,037 miles per hour at the equator.
The Earth revolves around the Sun at a speed of 66,627 miles per hour, completing one full orbital path every 365 days and 6 hours, which is why we have a leap year every 4 years (6 x 4 = 24).
The Sun revolves around our galaxy at an estimated speed of 515,000 miles per hour, and it takes 230,000,000 years to complete one lap around the Milky Way.
The Milky Way galaxy is hurtling through the universe at an estimated speed of 1,300,000 miles per hour. That means that at this time tomorrow, you will be 31,200,000 miles further away versus the previous day, from a fixed point in space. It has been doing this for billions of years!
The nearest star to Earth, outside of our Sun, is Proxima Centauri at 4.24 light years away. It is part of a triple-star system that includes Alpha Centauri A and B.
It would take Voyager I, which is moving through interstellar space at 38,000 miles per hour, a mere 76,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri. That gives you an idea of how far away astral bodies are, beyond our solar system.
Our Sun is but one star in the Milky Way galaxy. It is estimated that our galaxy contains over one hundred billion stars, each with an untold number of planets and moons.
There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the visible universe. When looking at points 9 and 10, it is almost absurd to think that we are alone in the cosmos. Our problem is that we lack the technology to get to other places, in order to explore them. Perhaps future generations will fare better.
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