Forty Three

I'm now forty three for the first time ever. I've orbitted the Sun 43 times, covering a distance of 40,506,000,000
kilometres.

The circumference equals the radius (150,000 Km.) doubled and multiplied by pi. Then multiply that by 43.

That's easy enough, but I want to know what it is in light years.

It takes light 8 minutes and 20 seconds to cover the radius. So it takes 16 minutes and 40 seconds if it gets a return ticket. That's a convenient 1000 seconds.

Pi = 3.1415927... So 3131.5927 seconds gives the number of light seconds for a single orbit. Multiply that by 43 and you get....

134658.4861 light seconds, or...
2244.308101666... light minutes, or...
37.40513502777... light hours, or...
Just over one and a half light days.


Fuck me, it's a long way to Proxima Centauri.

Actually, I've clocked up a few more miles than that, as Monty Python illustrates. The number above takes a simple orbit around the sun. But I'm also oscillating, as the Earth rotates, like the pen in a spirograph, and that will add a bit on.

If you take my position relative to the centre of the milky way, the rotation of the earth around the sun becomes an oscillation of it's own to add on to the 40,000 miles an hour that the Sun is travelling relative to galactic centre point. But I have to admit, the maths is beyond me on this one.