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NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour (science.nasa.gov)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Most familiar stars peacefully orbit the center of the Milky Way. But citizen scientists working on NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have helped discover an object moving so fast that it will escape the Milky Way’s gravity and shoot into intergalactic space. This hypervelocity object is the first such object found with the mass similar to or […]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

That's not context, that's using arbitrary reference frames.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What's the difference?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's like claiming you can beat Usain Bolt by sprinting in a moving train. Sure, with respect to ground you cover the distance faster than him, but it doesn't make much sense to count it that way.

[–] abysmalpoptart 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

That's not an analogy at all, as it's completely different from what i said earlier. I'm not trying to prove that Earth is moving amazingly fast, I'm trying to show how the headline seems grander than it is.

I also don't think a lot of people realize quite how fast the Earth is moving through space. Saying a million miles an hour really does seem impressive if you don't have that information. But as we speak, we are literally hurtling through space at half that pace.

If we weren't orbiting the sun we would end up orbiting something else at a different speed.

This would be similar to saying that San Bernardino county in California is 20000 sq mi, or about 50k km squared. It's just a number without context. But if i told you it's a county that is it was bigger than both the country of Switzerland and US State of West Virginia, that's added context for size comparison. The way that California divides its county structure does not invalidate this comparison, and is irrelevant.

I'm not really sure what your intent or point is here.

[–] abysmalpoptart 3 points 4 months ago

I don't think that's entirely fair to say. The headline reads sensationally about a celestial object, but our own sun is traveling at almost half that speed, and we're following it. I'm not trying to prove that the Earth is incredibly fast, only that the headline may sound more impressive than it is.