Don’t you feel that everything is moving? Of course not. If you do not suffer from dizziness and sit on your sofa, everything looks very calm and relaxed. But the real swindle is in the speed of the entire planet. These days, however, the earth is reaching its minimum speed. How fast does it normally move? Well, there are several answers to this question.
Multiple movements at the same time
This is explained in this “Scientific American” article by Rhett Herman. He is a professor at the University of Radford in Virginia (USA). The planet spins on itself. Complete a full lap every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and just over four seconds. The surface speed in Ecuador is around 1,609 kilometers per hour. But there are many more movements. We could also assume that the solar system is moving around the galaxy at a speed of approximately 828,000 kilometers per hour. The galaxy itself is moving towards the Great Attractor at a speed of 3,600,000 kilometers per hour.
But July 4th was a special day for another reason. The planet reached the aphel at exactly 13:34 (CEST, Spanish peninsula time). That is, at the point furthest in orbit from the sun. At that time, the Earth was 152,095,295 kilometers away. They are approximately 2.5 million more than the average distance and five more than the point closest to the sun or perihelion. This happened on January 5, as reported by “Space.com”.
Closer, faster
The Earth’s orbit is not a perimeter, but an ellipse. It is very similar to a range in which the distance from the sun barely fluctuates by 3%. How does that translate into speeds?
Kepler described it with his second law. The earth accelerates as it approaches the sun and slows as it withdraws. How much? The average speed of the planet is 107.208 km / h. But on July 4th, the farthest point (Aphel), there are 105,444. While the next (perihelion) is 109,044 kilometers per hour.
Neither the change in speed nor the distance is visible, nor does it affect the seasons. Although that may seem (in fact, summer comes in the northern hemisphere when the earth is further away from the sun). Instead, the seasons occur due to the inclination of the earth’s axis. In each epoch, one hemisphere is lighter than the other. The fact that the earth is reaching its minimum speed these days won’t change anything … in its appearance.
