Sta Hungry Stay Foolish

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

A blog by Leon Oudejans

Fasten your seatbelts

Earth rotates around its axis with 1,600 km (1,000 miles) per hour. Given Earth’s circumference of some 40,000 km, this process takes 24 hours. We call this morning, afternoon, evening and night. Similarly, Earth also rotates around the Sun with a speed of 107,000 km (66,000 miles) per hour. It takes Earth some 365 days to complete this orbit around the Sun. We refer to this as spring, summer, autumn, and winter (eg, astrosociety).

Rarely do we feel nauseous as our conscious brain does not register Earth’s speed. To some extent, it’s similar to sitting still in a high speed train. You need to look outside and focus on an object to notice speed. Inside a train, both Time and Space feel different.

The Sun (including its orbiting planets like our Earth) is orbiting around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy with a speed of some 70,000 km (43,000 miles) per hour. It takes the Sun some 225 million years to complete this orbit, a.k.a. a galactic year. The Milky Way Galaxy itself travels by 2.1 million km (1.3 million miles) per hour through the Universe. Still, we are oblivious.

The moon orbits around the earth in 29.5 days; we refer to this period as (lunar) months. The moon’s average orbital speed is 1,022 km per hour. The moon’s orbit affects Earth’s tides due to gravitational changes. The moon also affects human bodies. The most common example is the female menstruation period. The relationship between lunar positions and sleeping patterns is still debated (eg, AWMP). Yesterday’s New Moon did however affect my sleep.

The Sun’s impact seems relatively clear: daylight and warmth. Sunlight exposure also has negative and positive human health effects. Please also see my related blogs on weather, mood & pain, sunlight & viruses, climate & personality, skin colour. The absence of sunlight causes an urge for sleeping. Several studies indicate that sleeping cleanses our brain from toxic substances (see my 2016 blog). Please also see my sleep related blogs on wintersleep and addiction.

The Sumerian civilisation (my blogs) is the first documented one that studied the movements of the 5 visible planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn), moons and stars (e.g., our Sun). These studies must have resulted in conclusions on the predictability of seasons, tides, weather, etc. The predictability of this information still lives on in almanacs, like the Babylonian Almanac, Dutch Enkhuizer Almanak (1595), and various other almanacs.

The predictability of human character lives on in astrology and in various Zodiacs (eg, Sumerian, Babylonian, Chinese, and Western). Perhaps the thinking was like this: if humans live on Earth then the Gods must live on other planets and stars. Similar to astronomy, the position of these planets and stars “must” predict one’s character and destiny at birth.

In comparison with a hard science like astronomy, the soft science of (Chinese and Western) astrology still gives an impressive – about 80% – match: GoToHoroscope (eg, my blog). 

Life in the Fast Lane (1977) by Joe Walsh – artist, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2

Faster, faster. The lights are turning red.

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