Thanks Taff
So it's Nibira then!
Haha! 'Fraid not buddy, because IF Nibiru exists, it inhabits an orbit close to the ecliptic plane - i.e. pretty flat like all the others. This little sucker - unlike anything else ever tracked before - came tearing in from
above that plane (i.e. more perpendicular).
For me, there are three mind-blowing thoughts this thing provokes:
1. Consideration of the VAST interstellar gulf this thing has crossed
2. A sense of wonder at just how close it came to us as it performed its single hyperbolic (slingshot) orbit round our sun
3. It's speed out of our solar system (over 92,000 mph
)
Thinking about this sort of thing really puts things into perspective for me....
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
(waltz)
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!
