There is some kind of unknown but strong source of energy that fuels my interest in the universe, galaxies, star systems, and planets. Perhaps it’s because of what I’m made of. Perhaps not.
We all are journeying through the universe at unbelievable speed. The older you are, the more distance you’ve traveled. I’m currently 35.5 years old and here I want to zoom in on my galactic journey.
Because 35.5 years means that since I was born the earth has flown around the Sun 35.5 times (yes I know, I’m so smart). It did so at 30 kilometers per second. Yes, a quick Google search (#love) teaches us that the earth travels 30 kilometers through space every second. That means that while I was on earth (and I can tell you, most of my life I was here), I’ve been flying through space for 60 (seconds) x 60 (minutes) x 24 (hours) x 365 (days) x 30 (kilometers per second) x 35.5 (my age) = 33.585.840.000 km. That’s about 33.6 billion kilometers.
Now, the earth is not the only thing that moves in space. In fact, we are only moving because our Sun is also floating through space (it doesn’t matter that the sun is 330.000 times heavier than earth, it still floats around, without falling down – in fact, there is no ‘down’).
Our Sun moves within the Milky Way galaxy, with a speed of 220km per SECOND. Yes that’s right, our entire SOLAR SYSTEM (which includes Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and many moons, asteroids and our spaceships) is rushing trough space with 220 x 60 x 60 = 797.000 km/hour. Which looks like this:
Our solar system (with the Sun in the middle) flies around the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy. And as you might know, the centre of the Milky Way is occupied by a massive black hole. No worries, it’s not a super massive black hole, just a massive one. When we add up the distance that the Sun has travelled inside the Milky Way Galaxy (with 797.000 km/hour) to the distance the earth has travelled around the sun, my 35.5 year journey now equals surfing over more than a TOTAL OF 279 billion kilometres.
That would actually take me to the sun and back for more than 1800 times.
But now comes the fun part.
The Milky way, with its 100 billion stars, is in its entirety also moving. Together with countless other galaxies, similar to the Milky Way, we are travelling or travelling throughout the observable universe. All of us in fact move towards some unbelievably massive thing called The Great Attractor. The Great Attractor is a force that is attracting thousands of Galaxies, of which the Milky Way is one. This “thing” is pulling on us with such a force that we (the Milky with all it’s 200 billion stars) are moving towards it with a speed of 500 km/second.
Adding this speed or distance up to the 279 billion kilometres I’ve travelled within the Milky Way itself, you get the final figure of Twan Roubroeks’ total life journey through the universe: 839.6 billion kilometres.
That means every day of my life I’ve travelled over 64 million kilometres. Or 2.7 million kilometres per hour. So this means a speed of 45.000 km per minute, or 750km per second!
Next time you are on a birthday party and someone asks you where you’ve travelled in your lifetime, you have the option to give a slightly different kind of answer.
