Another orbit completed

Time for some quick, back-of-the-digital-napkin birthday mathematics — astronomy style.

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Today I’ve been alive on this planet for 51 years. Anyone who knows me well enough by now is keenly aware that I’m a massive astronomy buff. What ironically better way to highlight this literal milestone (kilometre-stone for my fellow metric users) than to crunch some orbital completion numbers, while providing a timely and important reminder — I’ll come back to that. More specifically, a breakdown of how many miles are in that proverbial stone. Break out your pocket protectors and Mountain Dew, things are about to get nerdy.

Given some internet sleuthing and my ability to still hammer out arithmetic calculations like Professor Hawking (narrator: he tapped in some multiplication numbers on his phone), I wanted to find out just how far I’ve travelled through the cosmos after these now 51 elliptical rotations completed around The Sun. My geekery originally depended on knowing the circumference of Earth’s orbit, but I decided to take it a couple of steps further — one backward, one foreword. Again, those who are familiar with my eccentricities will also know I’m a Top Gun buff.  Like Maverick and Goose I feel the need for speed, so buckle up for some absolutely blistering ones. These are the kind of ludicrous speeds that make the F-14 Tomcat look like a paper airplane floating in a puddle of molasses. (Bonus points for those who picked up the additional, unrelated geek cult reference.)

Let’s start with the smallest “orbit”: the one on Earth itself. Based on my residence’s latitude, I’m circling our planet’s axis at 1,239 km/h, meaning my wife can finally stop pestering me about speeding in the car. I wasn’t going that fast. Extrapolating out over 51 years, our napkin math (1,239 km/h ✕ 24 h/day ✕ 365 days/year ✕ 51 years) means I’ve travelled 553,535,640 kilometres simply by hitching a ride on this planet.

Mind. Blown.

That’s a number hard to even comprehend in and of itself, and I could’ve easily stopped there. As is the general overarching theme you’ve likely picked up on, if you know me you know; my nerd badge requires me to keep going. Why half-ass astronomy when we can go, umm…full-ass. (No, I really don’t know what it means either.) Let’s circle back — see what I did there? — to the original much larger one that started this whole astronomical debauchery: Earth’s orbital circumference.

The distance from The Sun to Earth is 149,597,870 km, which is the radius of my insanely large celebratory cosmic “birthday cake”. Given circumference equals 2πr, Earth racks up approximately 940,000,000 km every single year. This means I’ve travelled 47,940,000,000 kilometres around The Sun during my lifetime thus far. For those keeping track at home, that’s 47 billion. All while this planet-sized spinning top we call home rotates around its solar orbit at 107,226 km/h. 

Eat your heart out, Pete Mitchell. You got nothin’.

Welp, that’s it. Math lesson over, folks. Nothing more to learn here, carry on with your day. Stop looking at me like that. “Negative, Ghost Rider. The pattern is full.”

Have you learned nothing of me after all this?

As it turns out, our Sun has an orbit of its own through the Milky Way galaxy — by sheer gravity, the entire solar system along with it. I told you I loved this stuff, so shit’s about to get real. The entire cosmic dance above, itself circles its way around an incomprehensibly sized galactic stage every 230 million years. Even the embarrassing Maple Leafs’ Stanley Cup drought feels like an infinitesimal fraction of a popcorn fart in comparison to this length of time. The Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way at a mind-numbing 720,000 km/h; meaning in my 51 years alive while circling this planet, in turn orbiting The Sun, in turn orbiting the galaxy, I’ve travelled 321,667,200,000 kilometres.

Talk about going the distance.

More importantly, however, talk about suddenly feeling small.

As I alluded to at the beginning, geeking out about this really put into perspective how fleeting life truly is. Measured against astronomical scales of distance and time, our individual lives don’t even register against our own planet — let alone the universe. Our time to participate in this stellar dance, finite; our number of orbits, painfully limited. Against such an unfathomably massive but incredibly beautiful backdrop, our entire life can feel completely insignificant. Yet, it could not be more significant.

As I geeked out over these numbers, I realized a mere blink in time is all we’ll ever have. Life is far too precious; I myself have too easily forgotten how much before this scientifically cool but poignant wake up call. None of us knows when this incredible cosmic adventure will be over. For many of us, sadly, it was already cut short. This fun, geeky, number crunching exercise reminded me I need to do better. To make the most of whatever time I have left. To stop feeling small, and start living big. Compared to the vast and awe-inspiring distances our orbits around The Sun carry us, our life is but a mere drop in the ocean.

Yet, even a single drop sends ripples through the water.

I’m far too guilty of losing sight of what’s most important, all while spinning my wheels in the mud and going in my own much tinier circles. The old cliche that we are our own worst critic is apt; in my case, my own worst enemy. How many of those orbits have I wasted? How many forever lost to time? How many more years where despite movement on a stellar scale, I myself have remained motionless? The mere knowledge that just one year of our life can take us through an interstellar journey of this magnitude, is absolutely fucking incredible.

Now, more than ever before, I want my own life to do justice to that journey.