Nothing in the universe, small or large, is stationary. Everything moves. In many cases, the motion is as fascinating as the object itself.
During early July, the Sun lopes through Gemini 3 percent more sluggishly than it passed through Sagittarius last winter. That’s because Earth now moves at its slowest pace of the year. We’ve been braking for six months. We’ve lost a whopping Mach 3.
Meanwhile, the Moon spins so slowly that an elite lunar marathoner could keep the Sun from setting. And our sister planet, Venus, boasts the most lethargic rotation in the known universe, a mere 4 mph (6 km/h). By comparison, most U.S. cities whiz at very nearly the speed of sound.
All this squirms through my mind because Little, Brown and Company is just publishing my newest book. The result of two years’ work, Zoom is about natural motion and the wild stories of the forgotten men and women who made brilliant or lucky discoveries — like the man who first figured out why the wind blows.
I learned amazing stuff. Some involved astronomical objects, but most were revelations about everyday phenomena. The speed of blood. How fast all that stuff in your intestines creeps along. How slow molasses is. How the magnetic poles shift hourly by the length of a living room. And that relative to their size, bacteria can swim 10 times faster than fish. Some germs can cross a kitchen counter in an hour.
I included today’s hottest topics, such as unimaginably fast quantum phenomena and why distant galaxies seemingly racing at light-speed are actually just hanging out, receding solely because the empty space is expanding between us. My findings were mesmerizing, like the bizarre radiation discoveries a century ago and the lingering mysteries of cosmic rays. Why are these omnipresent incoming particles made almost entirely of heavy protons when there are just as many electrons in the universe? And what about the wild genius who first invented motion pictures before shooting his wife’s lover at point blank range?
Zoom’s subtitle is
How Everything Moves: From Atoms and Galaxies to Blizzards and Bees. It’s my lengthiest work. And, yes, this is a shameless plug. I can’t help it. It’s got way too much cool stuff to ever find its way onto this page. Did you know that ocean waves arrive every eight seconds? And, using typical values, that they match the speed of cars in moderate traffic? When reaching a shallowing seabed, a wave’s top starts moving faster than its base. The result: It rises and leans forward. When its height-to-wavelength ratio reaches a 1:7 proportion, the wave cannot support itself, and it “breaks.”
