Where we are going

My Orbit pointer

How many times have you asked or heard someone else ask, ‘Where am I going?’  I know this is a constant in my life, often in terms of the day to day but especially in terms of my whole life journey, and I see this same question in so much writing, art, even in political discussions.  There is a larger dimension to the question, we sometimes ask where are we going, as communities, countries and very occasionally as a species.  So, now let’s ask the even larger question, where are we, the Earth going, and I mean this in a literal sense.

After some time making sense of how we spin about, each day seeing the sun, moon and stars seemingly rotate while in fact we are the ones spinning around, I feel I have a growing ‘felt sense’ of our spinning.  So now I want to take the next step and grow into a ‘felt sense’ of our travel about the sun.

There are many good videos and resources about our orbit but how can I bring this into my body?  How can I grow a sense of where we are going at any time in the day or night?  I have created an Orbit pointer, a dial and pointer that shows our orbital direction throughout the day.

I recommend you start by working out the orbit from where you are.  Sunrise, Noon and Sunset are good markers, so at each of these check, what direction is the earth actually travelling, regardless of where you are on the spin?  It may well feel very counter intuitive for a while, in the Southern hemisphere, at sunrise, we are actually travelling straight up, at  noon we are travelling to the west and at sunset we are travelling ‘down’.

I have used a 24hr electric clock embedded in a half globe to track the orbit direction.  Have fun and contact me if you want details of how I made my orbiter.

orbital_dial_04

I haven’t mentioned the speeds!  I’ve put some of these on the face to remind me:

  • Our Rotation speed at the equator: 1600 km/hr
  • My Rotation speed in Western Victoria, 37 degrees south latitude: 1224 km/hr
  • Our Solar Orbit speed: 107,000 km/hr
  • Our Solar system’s ‘relative’ speed – towards Vega: 70,000 km/hr
  • Our Solar system’s orbit around the galaxy speed: 792,000 km/hr
  • Our Galaxy’s speed as it moves through space (We are moving roughly in the direction of the sky that is defined by the constellations of Leo and Virgo): 2.1m km/hr