Happy Easter

          

For now, however, we are locked amicably in this fortuitous dance, with Earth traveling around the sun in its near-circular orbit, covering about 584 million miles in little more than 365 days (actually 365.242199 days, necessitating those periodic leap years to keep human time in step with the movements of the celestial spheres).  It is impossible to comprehend, much less sense that we ride upon Earth, which is spinning like a top as it simultaneously hurtles through space at 66,800 miles per hour.  Nor do we have the sense that the sun, too, is rotating in its own orbit as the Milky Way itself revolves around the black hole at its center.  And yet our solar system, located about two-thirds from the center of the Milky Way, is speeding through the heavens at 155 miles per second, circling the galaxy every 25 million years or so.

          Then there are neutrinos, some of the lightest particles known, also produced by the sun, with the uncanny ability to pass right through space, through Earth, constantly and continually passing through everything, you and me and all of it.  So reluctant are they to interact with other forms of matter that if neutrinos were to pass through a wall of solid lead 3,000 light-years thick, only about half would be stopped en route.  --Kerry Temple, ND Magazine Spring 2015