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How fast is Earth traveling through space? That depends. | Michelle Thaller

How fast is Earth traveling through space? That depends. | Michelle Thaller If you're interested in licensing this or any other Big Think clip for commercial or private use, contact our licensing partner Executive Interviews:

We are hurtling through space. But where are we going?

- How fast are you, planet Earth, our solar system, and the galaxy moving right now? There's no one answer to that question because we're going in several directions and multiple speeds all at the same time. How is that possible?

- Within the Milky Way galaxy, our solar system is orbiting around a massive black hole at the center of galaxy at half a million miles an hour. Separately, the Milky Way galaxy is in the Virgo Supercluster, which is falling into the Great Attractor, a huge group of galaxies called the Laniakea Supercluster, at one and a half million miles an hour.

- And all of that is superimposed on top of the natural expansion of the universe, which isn't really a speed, but is happening at 75 kilometers per second per megaparsec.

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