So, how far do you believe you traveled today? Did you make a trip to work, go on a holiday drive, or perhaps fly across vast distances? Personally, I drove around seven kilometers to the grocery store and back, which is quite an adventure for someone who mainly works from home.

However, this is just the beginning of our journey. We know the Sun doesn’t actually move across the sky but rather, we are the ones rotating. Visualize the Sun stationary above us as the Earth spins eastward, with gravity holding us firmly on the surface. After about twelve hours, we’ve rotated enough that the Sun disappears from sight.

Though the ground beneath us seems solid and unmoving, it’s essential to recognize that the Earth’s surface at the equator moves at speeds comparable to a jet aircraft. Closer to the poles, the rotation is much slower, and standing at either pole would result in a gentle spin once every 24 hours.

For those living near the equator, it’s astonishing to realize that you’ve traveled approximately 40,000 kilometers in a single day. Enjoy the trip? Surprisingly, many objects on our planet are speeding through space at supersonic velocities. (The reason the Sun doesn’t seem to race across the sky is its vast distance from us.)

It’s remarkable that our atmosphere and birds remain with us instead of drifting away into space. This stability is thanks to gravity, which keeps everything anchored, ensuring we have the air we breathe and the birds we appreciate.

This rotation has persisted for billions of years and will continue for countless more. The initial momentum came from the spinning disk of the early solar system, and nothing in the vacuum of space can halt this motion. Only the gravitational influences of the Moon and Sun slightly alter our speed.

This is beneficial! As our planet rotates, it receives consistent sunlight, which aids in atmospheric and oceanic circulation, contributing to the conditions necessary for life.

Total distance covered in the last day: 40,000 km + 7 km.

And yet it moves

Galileo famously remarked, “And yet it moves…” during his trial for asserting that Earth orbits the Sun. Four centuries ago, this notion was so controversial that individuals faced dire consequences for suggesting it. Galileo recanted but we now understand that our planet completes an orbit around the Sun each year.

On average, we are 149.6 million kilometers from the Sun, resulting in an orbital circumference of 940 million km. This means we must travel at impressive speeds to complete this journey in just over 365 days.

In the last 24 hours, you’ve traveled approximately 2.57 million kilometers at a speed exceeding 100,000 km/h. Even the fastest bullet cannot match our velocity; we are racing through the cosmos at more than twenty times its speed.

Understanding this helps explain the devastating impact of asteroids colliding with Earth, as our immense orbital speeds translate to significant kinetic energy, resulting in catastrophic impacts.

So here we are, spinning through space at jet-like speeds while simultaneously orbiting the Sun at speeds surpassing even the fastest rockets. Additionally, Earth is tilted at an angle of 23.4 degrees, causing our paths through space to resemble intricate 3-D spirals.

Historically, skeptics argued that if Earth were in motion, it would leave the Moon behind. However, gravity and momentum ensure that the Moon, along with satellites and space stations, remains with us as we travel.

Updated daily distance traveled: 2,570,000 km + 40,000 km + 7 km.

But wait, there’s more

Describing the vastness of galaxies often leaves us at a loss for words. These are dynamic clusters of stars, constantly in motion. If one could fast-forward time while observing the night sky, the stars would appear to shift and rearrange, as our Sun orbits the Milky Way Galaxy.

Can you see the recurring theme? The universe is filled with spinning and whirling entities.

It’s about 26,000 light-years to the center of our galaxy, where a massive black hole resides. Given the immense distances involved, we can use light-years for measurement. Our own galaxy is roughly 2.46 × 10¹? km from the center.

Completing a full orbit around the galaxy takes about 225 million years, and our planet has made this journey only twenty times over its 4.5 billion-year existence.

Calculating our speed on a galactic scale reveals that we travel at approximately 780,000 km/h, covering around 18.7 million km in a single day.

However, our orbit around the Sun is tilted about sixty degrees relative to the flat plane of our galaxy. Thus, we are spinning in circles while simultaneously revolving around the Sun and navigating the vastness of the galaxy at incredible speeds.

This cosmic journey resembles a chaotic amusement park ride, yet physics keeps us unaware of the whirlwind as we remain anchored to the Sun.

New daily distance traveled: 18,700,000 km + 2,570,000 km + 40,000 km + 7 km.

But wait, I must discuss Milkomeda

What’s Milkomeda? It’s a term for the future collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, which is expected to occur in about four billion years, potentially involving the Triangulum Galaxy as well.

These two massive galaxies are drawn together by gravity, moving against the general flow of the universe caused by its expansion.

Currently, the Milky Way and Andromeda are separated by 2.5 million light-years, meaning light takes that long to reach us from Andromeda. Assuming the collision point lies halfway, both galaxies are racing towards each other at 340,000 km/h, which translates to a distance of 8.1 million kilometers traveled in that direction each day.

Gravity and momentum ensure that as the Milky Way advances, the Sun and its planets remain with us.

Corrected daily distance traveled: 8,100,000 km + 18,700,000 km + 2,570,000 km + 40,000 km + 7 km.

And we haven’t even addressed the ‘Great Attractor’

“What’s this new concern?” you might wonder. The Great Attractor is a point in space drawing us towards it at high speeds, located behind a dense region of stars, gas, and dust in our galaxy.

Once a mystery, advancements in infrared and radio astronomy have revealed that the Great Attractor is a gravitational center of hundreds of thousands of galaxies, far less ominous than initially thought.

To measure our progress towards this area, we can reference the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation from the Big Bang, which fills the universe.

We’ve determined our velocity in relation to this background to be approximately 627 ± 22 km/s (2.26 million km/h). This staggering speed equates to moving toward the Great Attractor at roughly one 500th of light speed, with our biosphere traveling 54.2 million kilometers in the past day.

This is utterly absurd.

Grand total daily distance traveled: 54,200,000 km + 8,100,000 km + 18,700,000 km + 2,570,000 km + 40,000 km + 7 km = 83,610,007 km.

So, how did your estimate of today’s travels measure up? Were you in the ballpark?

Lastly, it's important to note that the fabric of spacetime is expanding, causing galaxies to drift away from each other. This cosmic expansion will ultimately surpass our movement towards the Great Attractor. While it doesn’t make galaxies shift through space, it does affect our observable universe, with some galaxies receding so quickly that even light cannot catch up.

Now, let’s take a moment to pause and relax from this mind-bending cosmic journey. Time to unwind, turn on the TV, and remind ourselves that for the evening, we’re not going anywhere.

And Musk’s Tesla Roadster? It has become a solar satellite, undeniably the fastest car ever, moving faster than Earth itself, with a maximum speed of 121,000 km/h, covering 2.9 million kilometers daily in its solar orbit.