The longest day of the year and you missed it.

For anyone who's interested Jun 21st was the first official day of summer, also the longest day of the year with about fourteen and a half hours of sunshine. You might be interested in knowing that although it's warmer in the summer here in the northern hemisphere the planet is actually farther from the sun at this time of year. So we are about three million miles farther from the sun in the summer than in the winter. (the distance change is about 3% of the total distance and has almost no effect on earth's temperature) The reason we are warmer up north in the summer has to do with the tilt of the Earth's axis during this season. Also although the earth moves around the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour it moves faster in the winter than in the summer, why? because the path around the sun is elliptical not circular. (think egg shaped for those of you with math skills similar to my own.) I would tell you how fast we are moving around the sun at this particular date but in attempting to do so my brain would melt into a puddle of pink goo somewhat reminiscent of bubble gum on a hot sidewalk. Let's just say we are all speed demons and leave it at that. Scientists can easily tell us how fast we are traveling around the sun as we have a guidepost to measure it against. (The sun of course.) After that, measurement of our speed gets a bit iffy. We know our solar system is orbiting the center of our galaxy. (The good old Milky Way) Estimates put the speed at 560,000 miles per hour. (It takes about 230 Million years for our solar system to orbit the center of the milky way galaxy, so I think we can guess from these numbers that space is fricken huge.) Measuring the speed of our galaxy is a lot harder as we have no frame of reference, everything out there is moving, there is nothing standing still to measure against. But some genius scientists have used the Cosmological Background Radiation as a starting point and calculated we are traveling around 900,000 miles per hour. And moving toward the constellations Hydra and Centaurus. But the constellations Hydra and Centaurus are in our galaxy so it's a lot like saying that the passengers in a bus are moving toward the driver. Why don't we feel all this speed? Because we are so small. Infinitesimally, unequivocally tiny. ("A mote in god's eye." As Larry Niven once said.) All the grains of sand in all the beaches of the world are as nothing compared to innumerable stars and galaxies that spin over our heads (or beneath our feet depending on your point of reference.)Let me just close by saying this. The universe is a big place, so get over yourselves. Ciao for now.