BILLY'S AMAZING FACTS

Last updated 04/23/02

ASTRONOMICAL NUMBERS THAT WILL ASTONISH YOU

The speed of light = 186,000 mps ( miles per second ). Now that's about as fast as it gets.

The speed of sound = 1,088 fps ( feet per second ) with the air temperature of 32 degrees fahrenheit.
Unlike the speed of light, the speed of sound will change as the temperature changes. Billy knows why this is, do you? If not, have a little fun and try to find out. You may find yourself learning all sorts of neat, new stuff.

Earth's rotational speed around it's Axis at the Equator = 1,041 mph( miles per hour ). This is slowing things down a bit, but hey, multiply that by 24 and that's a lot of traveling in a day.
How far do you think you could get spending the day in a jet traveling at 1,041 mph, heading East around the equator? Would you go backwards? Or! would you be going 1,041 mph, in a jet, heading East, around the equator?

Earth's rotational speed around the Sun = 67,000 mph. This is picking things up a little, but what does that do to your place in the solar system when doing 1,041 mph, in a jet, around the equator, heading East? I'll tell ya this really gets Billy in the thinking mode.

Earth weighs in at around 6.6 Sextillion Tons. Now lets see, that's like a lot of zero's. I know Billy knows how many. Do You?

Earth is hit by 6 tons of meteorites a day, every day. How long would it take to change the 6.6 Sextillion to 6.7, or 6.8? Just thought it might give you some thing to do. Oh by the way, that's 12,000 lbs. a day or 4,380,000 a year.

Earth our beloved home is said to have an atmosphere that proportionally is thinner than the skin of an apple. Once Billy told me about that I got to thinking, and from that day on I always think twice before I do anything that might cause harm to it.

Surface area, do you know the surface area of our planet? Well Billy had told me it was something like 196,935,000 square miles. That's a lot of real-estate until you look at the next fact below. It really doesn't leave much to walk about.

Hey here's another on of those little realized facts about our home Earth. 70% of the surface is covered in water. Now most people already know that, right? Well did you know that 97% of that is salt water? Which leaves us with only 3% of fresh water. What really got me thinking is how little drinking water there is. I'll tell you this, its a lot less than 3%. Most people think about it, but don't realize that there is so very little drinking water left. I bet if you take the time to look it up, or figure it out, you would never never ever do anything that might pollute it again.

The Sun's rotational speed around Axis at the Equator = 4,555.32 mph( approximately ).

Let's, see here, Oh yeh! How about this one, The Sun's rotational speed around the Galaxy = 135 mps. And it takes the sun 226 million Earth years to complete one orbit around the Galaxy. Now that's a 1 to 226,000,000 year ratio. So!, I ask!, how many miles will the Sun travel in a year? Yeh! Yeh! Yeh! I know, not enough digits on the ol'e calculator. So come on, get the lead out. ( get it? lead? )
Well at least I didn't ask you how many miles in a Sun year. Or did I just do that?

Did you know The Sun moves up and down the Galactic plane at 6.25mps, meaning that it to like most orbiting objects in the Universe do not necessarily orbit there attracting bodies at there attracting bodies equatorial plane. This up and down motion being cause by the thousands upon thousands of other orbiting bodies in our galaxy.

I read in some of Billy's notes that The diameter of the Milky Way in visable light is 60,000 light years across, and that the true diameter of the Milky Way, when taking into consideration the invisable matter that can not be seen, is 600,000 light years in diameter. Now that's one heck of a neighborhood.
Maybe one of you could try to find out if in fact this is true, after all, like he said in the beginning, Billy's no expert, just a dude that likes looking at all those points of light in the night sky and wonders if maybe someone is looking back.

How long do you think it will be before the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way Galaxy encounter a mid space collision between themselves? What collision you ask, Oh yeh, you better believe it baby, in
( try to find ) years there is going to be one heck of a wreck and Earth, if it is still around, will be right in the middle of it.
"Question"
At what height will you no longer be able to hear anything?
Why?
If you think you know the answers, E-mail Billy and tell him about it.

"A really, really big star"
Betelgeuse, the shoulder of Orion, is 425 light years away and 60,000 times brighter than our star the Sun. It is so big that if you replaced the Sun with Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse would fill our solar system out past the orbit of Jupiter.
See for yourself

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Last update April, 2002