How fast travels earth

Related: How Big is Earth? Another reason that humans started to realize that we might not be the center of the universe came from looking at parallax , or apparent change in the position of the stars with respect to each other. For a simple example of parallax, hold up your index finger in front of your face at arm's length. Look at it with your left eye only, closing your right eye.

Then close your right eye, and look at the finger with your left. The finger's apparent position changes. That's because your left and right eyes are looking at the finger with slightly different angles. The same thing happens on Earth when we look at stars. It takes about days for us to orbit the sun. If we look at a star located relatively close to us in the summer and look at it again in the winter, its apparent position in the sky changes because we are at different points in our orbit.

We see the star from different vantage points. With a bit of simple calculation, using parallax we can also figure out the distance to that star.

Earth's spin is constant, but the speed depends on what latitude you are located at. Here's an example. The circumference distance around the largest part of the Earth is roughly 24, miles 40, kilometers , according to NASA. This area is also called the equator. If you estimate that a day is 24 hours long, you divide the circumference by the length of the day.

Related: Check out some stunning images of Earth from space. You won't be moving quite as fast at other latitudes, however. If we move halfway up the globe to 45 degrees in latitude either north or south , you calculate the speed by using the cosine a trigonometric function of the latitude.

A good scientific calculator should have a cosine function available if you don't know how to calculate it. However, the time it takes Earth to complete one full rotation on its axis with respect to distant stars is actually 23 hours 56 minutes 4. At the equator, its circumference is roughly 40, kilometres, so dividing this by the length of day means that, at the equator, Earth spins at about kilometres per hour.

As you move north or south, the circumference of Earth gets smaller, so the speed of spin reduces until it reaches its slowest at both poles. And all of this is nothing compared with the , kilometres per hour at which Earth orbits the sun. The Milky Way itself is moving through the vastness of intergalactic space. Our galaxy belongs to a cluster of nearby galaxies, the Local Group, and together we are easing toward the center of our cluster at a leisurely 25 miles a second. If all this isn't enough to make you feel you deserve an intergalactic speeding ticket, consider that we, along with our cousins in the Local Group, are hurtling at a truly astonishing miles a second toward the Virgo Cluster, an enormous collection of galaxies some 45 million light-years away.

Skip to main content. This radiation, which remains from the immensely hot and dense primordial fireball that was our early universe, is known as the cosmic microwave background radiation CBR.

The CBR presently pervades all of space. It is the equivalent of the entire universe "glowing with heat. Because the CBR permeates all space, we can finally answer the original question fully, using the CBR as the frame of reference.

The earth is moving with respect to the CBR at a speed of kilometers per second. We can also specify the direction relative to the CBR. It is more fun, though, to look up into the night sky and find the constellation known as Leo the Lion. The earth is moving toward Leo at the dizzying speed of kilometers per second. It is fortunate that we won't hit anything out there during any of our lifetimes!