If you live near the equator then you are moving in an easterly direction at about 1,600 km/hour. You would make one revolution around the Earth’s axis, about 40,000 kms, every day.

But the Earth is also traveling around the sun at about 30 km/sec and thus you would make a trip of nearly a billion (1,000 million) kms each year.

The sun, in turn, is traveling in the direction of Vega at about 250 km/sec and makes a large orbit around the galaxy in about 220 million years.

And our galaxy is traveling in the local group at about 600 km/sec.

Then there is the movement of our local group, together with other galaxy superclusters towards an unseen mass concentration at about 700 km/sec.

So how fast are you traveling? Well you can’t just add up all these numbers as they are actually velocity vectors and you would need to take directions of travel into account.

But, next time a speed-cop wants to give you a speeding ticket for doing 130 km/hour, just ask him "relative to what?"

Submitted by Brian Fraser