How fast the earth spins

Consider the movement of the earth's surface with respect to the planet's center. The earth rotates once every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4. Thus, the surface of the earth at the equator moves at a speed of meters per second--or roughly 1, miles per hour.

As schoolchildren, we learn that the earth is moving about our sun in a very nearly circular orbit. It covers this route at a speed of nearly 30 kilometers per second, or 67, miles per hour.

In addition, our solar system--Earth and all--whirls around the center of our galaxy at some kilometers per second, or , miles per hour. As we consider increasingly large size scales, the speeds involved become absolutely huge! The galaxies in our neighborhood are also rushing at a speed of nearly 1, kilometers per second towards a structure called the Great Attractor, a region of space roughly million light-years one light year is about six trillion miles away from us.

This Great Attractor, having a mass quadrillion times greater than our sun and span of million light-years, is made of both the visible matter that we can see along with the so-called dark matter that we cannot see. If stars very far away seem to be moving, that's because the solar system is moving compared with the relative position of those far away stars. To bring this concept back down to Earth, "If I start walking, I can tell that I'm moving because the buildings I pass by seem to be moving," from in front to behind me, Mack said.

If she looks at something more distant, like a mountain on the horizon, it moves a little slower because it's farther away than the buildings, but it still moves relative to her position. Then there's the entire Milky Way, which is pulled in different directions by other massive structures, such as other galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Just like scientists can tell that the solar system is moving based on the relative movement of other stars, they can use the relative movement of other galaxies to determine how fast the Milky Way is moving through the universe. Even though everything is moving all the time, living organisms on Earth's surface don't feel it for the same reason passengers on an airplane don't feel themselves zipping through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, Mack said.

When the plane lifts off, passengers feel the plane's acceleration as it speeds down the runway and lifts off; that weighted feeling is caused by the plane's quickly changing speed. But once the plane is flying at cruising altitude, passengers won't feel the speed of hundreds of miles per hour because the speed doesn't change. In true fashion, however, scientists are theorizing that Earth somehow spun faster than normal last year.

But if Earth is spinning faster , what does that ultimately mean for humanity? This means the days in were relatively shorter, astronomically speaking, than they were the previous year. Normally, Earth takes about 86, seconds to spin on its axis, or make a full one-day rotation, though it has been known to fluctuate here and there.

According to TimeandDate , the last time every day of a year was shorter than 86, seconds was back in The Sun, Earth, and the entire solar system also are in motion, orbiting the center of the Milky Way at a blazing miles a second.

Even at this great speed, though, our planetary neighborhood still takes about million years to make one complete orbit -- a testament to the vast size of our home galaxy. Dizzy yet? Well hold on.