1 million miles an hour is so fast, the speed of light is still 671 times faster.
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
132 points (97.8% liked)
Interesting Shares
812 readers
32 users here now
Companion community of !globalnews@lemmy.zip to share interesting articles, projects and research that doesn't fit the definition of news.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
So you're saying it's relatively slow?
Yes. Still relatively fast though too.
It is pretty wild how so much mass could be accelerated to that speed.
The idea that a 3 body system could cause it is really cool. Probably not useful to us, but still very cool
I'm getting mass just thinking about it.
Did Fukitech release a 3 body system!?
Dammit, I just got the 2!
That’s 0.0015c
Relative to what?
Planet 9 project have helped discover an object moving so fast that it will escape the Milky Way’s gravity and shoot into intergalactic space.
The galaxy presumably.
OHLOOKITSTHEREawww it's gone
Whatta ya mean, you blinked??
That's sort of fast I suppose
What is it and where it goin'?
Isn't the sun revolving around the center of the milky way at approximately 450,000 mph? And the Earth revolves around the sun, so we're moving about half as fast as this new object right now. One million is pretty fast, but context makes it a little less shocking.
That's not context, that's using arbitrary reference frames.
What's the difference?
It's like claiming you can beat Usain Bolt by sprinting in a moving train. Sure, with respect to ground you cover the distance faster than him, but it doesn't make much sense to count it that way.
That's not an analogy at all, as it's completely different from what i said earlier. I'm not trying to prove that Earth is moving amazingly fast, I'm trying to show how the headline seems grander than it is.
I also don't think a lot of people realize quite how fast the Earth is moving through space. Saying a million miles an hour really does seem impressive if you don't have that information. But as we speak, we are literally hurtling through space at half that pace.
If we weren't orbiting the sun we would end up orbiting something else at a different speed.
This would be similar to saying that San Bernardino county in California is 20000 sq mi, or about 50k km squared. It's just a number without context. But if i told you it's a county that is it was bigger than both the country of Switzerland and US State of West Virginia, that's added context for size comparison. The way that California divides its county structure does not invalidate this comparison, and is irrelevant.
I'm not really sure what your intent or point is here.
I don't think that's entirely fair to say. The headline reads sensationally about a celestial object, but our own sun is traveling at almost half that speed, and we're following it. I'm not trying to prove that the Earth is incredibly fast, only that the headline may sound more impressive than it is.
clearly an Interstellar traveller
Ah, a photoid strike, finally.
The question is, did they miss their first target?