Another 940 million km of travel completed
4 Comments Published by Eric February 12th, 2009 in TravelThat brings my total travel to date to over 42 billion km.
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"A well-crafted pepperoni pizza, being necessary to the preservation of a diverse menu, the right of the people to keep and cook tomatoes, shall not be infringed." I would ask you to try to argue that this statement says that only pepperoni pizzas can keep and cook tomatoes, and only well-crafted ones at that. This is basically what the so-called states rights people argue with respect to the well-regulated militia, vs. the right to keep and bear arms.
Happy 45th birthday!
How far have you travelled if you account for all that the spiraling that you’re doing, about 365.25 revolutions in a year, on a sphere (radius 6,371.0 km), and you at a latitude of about 37 degrees above the equator?
Thanks, Gilbert!
I thought about that, but I didn’t bother to include it since it didn’t contribute that significantly. Ignoring that the path is a spiral, and any surface travel and time spent at other latitudes, the annual contribution of the Earth’s rotation is roughly cos(37 degrees) * 6371 km * 2pi * 365.25, which is about 11.7 million km. That’s only an additional 1.24%.
I also disregarded a much larger component, the rotation of the galaxy, because it isn’t known very precisely (perhaps 6 to 7 billion km/year), and any movement of the galaxy within the Local Group or at larger scales.
I should have known that someone would call me on it!
Just a rough estimate, you should have as much energy as 17 tons of TNT should you hit something “still”
Happy birthday.
Thanks, Les! I’ll have to watch out for “stationary” objects.