Half a Million Miles an Hour

By Bobby Neal Winters

On Tuesday, January 4, 2022, the planet Earth is at perihelion--its closest point of approach--to the Sun.  The Earth, on the average, is speeding around the Sun at almost 67 thousand miles an hour.

But we don’t notice it.

Our bodies don’t sense speed, or velocity, per se. Rather our bodies experience change in velocity, what the physicists call acceleration. There is acceleration, but it is mainly a change in direction as we go in a circle around the Sun.  This acceleration is small, on the order of a degree per day. (I am leaving out the rotation of the Earth here, because it doesn’t fit my New Year theme. Deal with it.)

All this to say, the human race has been going 67 thousand miles per hour its entire existence and has never felt it.  We know it now.  A few people choose not to believe it, but it is a known thing.

Last year at this time people were happy to be done with the year 2020.  They were looking forward to 2021 as a bring of new things, but it turned out, 2021 was just a knock-off sequel like 2020, Part 2: Delta Force. 

We feel like nothing has changed.

And in a certain sense we are right.  Human beings are still chimpanzees with nuclear bombs, alcohol, and cell phones.

In another sense, we are still going through space at 67 thousand miles per hour...in a circle.

However, there are other things going on. There are other directions of movement.  The Sun--and Earth with it--are traveling around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy (Is there a Snickers Galaxy somewhere? Maybe we should take that name because of all the nuts.) at almost half a million miles per hour.  This is even more imperceptible to us because the acceleration is even smaller.  

The Sun has been moving at this speed for billions of years, irrespective of us or any living thing on the planet.

There are things that are moving us great distances that we are completely unaware of.

Think of the things you can watch on TV now that would’ve shut down the networks for showing it in the 1970s.  There are now things on television that would’ve scandalized truck drivers in those days. The change happened, and was allowed to, because it happened slowly.

We’ve been annoyed since early 2020 because a lot of changes have happened fast.  In the long run, the big changes won’t be the things that stick around. We’ve noticed them.  The things that stick around will be the small things we’ve picked up along the way.  

When a fly annoys you, you swat it very quickly.  The fly will be gone, but the stain the flyswatter leaves might very well remain.

In any case, a New Year is coming.  The number at the end changes from 1 to 2. Life goes on.

The New Year will be full of love and blessings.  Don’t let them slip past you.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )