17 Comments

Can’t sign up for membership till after election when all my tiny offerings will stop being deducted from my credit card. Am retired last May… the numbers don’t work in my favor on fixed income .. living on good will and losing a bit of excess wt is only plus right now… loved your numbers .. will re read & enjoy w grandson she 7 1/2 loves numbers!! And space 🛸

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Carol, just keep reading and don't worry about payments! And, thank you!

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Considering each birthday marks the completion of another trip around the Sun, how many miles have been traveled by the age of 50? 60? 70?

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Relative to the Sun, each decade adds up to about 6 billion miles, give or take a hair, so by the time you're 50, you've gone around 30 billion miles, and so on. Now, just keep in mind that's relative to the Sun - relative to the galactic center, it's gonna be much more, probably 215 billion or so. Those cosmic treadmills are always running! Of course, relative to New York or Tokyo, it's gonna be in the tens or hundreds of thousands of miles, I would guess, for most folks. I might have about a million road miles under my belt thanks to far too much travel.

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Yikes!

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Authoritative voice:

Slow down, speedy!

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🤯 back to the first paragraph I was at a tourist trap in Canada and they had signs for the Americans that 100kmh was different than 100mph. That's as far as my brain will let me go on this one this morning

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Love this !

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"Why don't they just use miles (pounds, inches, etc) like everyone else?"

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"Can I ever really BE in a 55 mile zone, if the position of that 55 mile zone itself is changing at stupefying speed?! Why are you taking those handcuffs out? It's just physics. Officer? Officer?! Why?!"

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This argument will only ever work on physics nerds, so the probability of getting off with a warning with this strategy is very, very low.

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Non-zero probability is good enough for me, let's go!

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So you're saying there's a chance.

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Um... the Earth only spins 1,000 mph at the equator. Halfway to either pole, it's only moving at 500 mph.

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Although my larger point was that even the spinning of the Earth isn't significant as compared to the speed at which galaxies are flying apart from one another, this is an excellent observation, and duly noted, Ken!

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Another very creative approach.

There is a more literary version of the saying that goes something like this. "Everything is relative. Just ask Oedipus." :)

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I remember hearing that! You know I can't resist fun wordplay.

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