Today I reached the summit of TwoBit Peak just in time to catch a whiff of odorous evidence emanating from two lawbreaking teenage boys, and also just in time to watch the sun dip behind the mountains to the west.
Mountains stand still, in contrast to the sun, which zips across the sky at astronomical speeds. To someone here on Planet Earth, one moment the sun is in full view and too blinding to look at, a moment later it shines its last ray of light before night has come again.
Atop TwoBit Peak, two other teenagers, a boy and girl, asked me to take a photo of them. I obliged. Bodies in orbit, hands gravitating towards each other—their hormones, like the sun, also moving with great speed.
Of course, the sun isn't really moving. It's an illusion created by the spin of the earth.
2 comments:
JEC: Serious question, is the sun 100% stationary? Or might it be revolving around something else, similarly to how the moon revolves around the earth?
Bobby et al.— It's all relative. From the perspective of a hiker, the sun moves east to west. To an astronomer studying the solar system, the sun stays put. To a cosmologist studying galaxies and clusters, nothing we do here on Earth matters.
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