Unimaginably and incomprehensively fast would be the answer.
We've actually touched on this subject before.
This other article by Andrew Fraknoi gives other insights, however. Click here to see the whole story.
An excerpt: "And how fast is the Milky Way Galaxy moving? The speed turns out to be an astounding 1.3 million miles per hour (2.1 million km/hr)! We are moving roughly in the direction on the sky that is defined by the constellations of Leo and Virgo. Although the reasons for this motion are not fully understood, astronomers believe that there is a huge concentration of matter in this direction. Some people call it The Great Attractor, although we now know that the pull is probably not due to one group of galaxies but many. Still the extra gravity in this direction pulls the Milky Way (and many neighbor galaxies) in that direction."
The image above is the Leo Triplet in the constellation Leo. So the next time you look up the night sky, look for the constellations Leo and Virgo. Apparently that's where we are heading.
[Image by Anttler, per GNU Free Documentation/ Free Software Foundation.]
Related post: Earth's speed around the universe
Related post: CMBR Dipole: Speeding Through the Universe
How fast? absolute velocity?
Posted by: Xiaoyu | March 23, 2008 at 07:35 AM