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Right now, the Earth and all the other planets in our solar system are circling the sun at unfathomable speeds.
Planetary scientist James O’Donoghue mission is to help people visualize this mind-boggling movement. O’Donoghue, who works for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, uses his free time to summarize the complex physics of our solar system into miniature animations.
Two of his videos capture the speed at which each planet travels. Visualizations reveal that planets close to the sun move through space at amazing speeds. In comparison, the more distant planets seem to meander at a leisurely pace.
This is because objects closer to the sun must move faster so that its gravity does not drag them into fiery death.
“All of the objects that we see in stable orbits around the sun are there because they orbit fast enough to escape its gravitational pull. If they weren’t fast enough, they wouldn’t escape,” said O’Donoghue to Insider. “In short, the planets we see today are the survivors.”
The first video, below, shows the speed of each planet on its path around the sun. Mercury, the closest to the sun, travels nearly 30 miles per second along its path. Neptune may seem slow, but it is still traveling 3 miles per second. It’s about six times faster than a bullet.
The animation above does not, however, show how many orbits the planets make relative to each other.
O’Donoghue therefore made another animation, below, to count the orbits (note the ticker “number of orbits” which appears to the right of the planets). Each time a planet crosses the screen, it orbits the sun.
“Objects near the sun necessarily orbit faster because they exist there,” O’Donoghue said.
As a result, Mercury orbits the sun several times per Earth year. Neptune, however, takes almost 164 Earth years to complete its journey around our star.
Pluto is not shown because it is a dwarf planet.
Read the original article on Business Insider
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