How many days would it take the earth to travel around the sun if it traveled at the speed that the moon revolves around the earth?
It takes twenty-eight days for the moon to travel around the earth. To calculate the speed the moon travels we must figure out what distance the moon travels in those 28 days, or the circumference of the circle the moon travels. The formula to calculate the circumference of a circle is Pi(d) (the moon does not travel in a circle around the earth, but rather an elliptical orbit, using a circle will get us a close enough estimate of the radius we need and it will be much easier to calculate). The moon on average is 384,400 km away from the Earth, and the Earth is 12,756 km in diameter, so we’ll add 12,756 to 384,400 times 2 which is 781,556 our diameter. If we multiply Pi by 781,556, we get 2,455,258 as the circumference of the circle the moon is traveling in. That means the moon travels at a rate of 87,687 km per day or 3653 km/hour.
Now we have to do the same math in regards to the Earth’s voyage around the sun. The Earth travels around the sun once every 365 days. The distance between the Earth and the Sun is about 150,000,000 km (we’ll have to multiply this by two to get the diameter, add another 1.4 million kilometers for the diameter of the sun , and we have a total diameter of 301,400,000 km. If we multiply that by Pi, we get 946,848,100 km, divide that by 365.25 (got to remember the leap years) and we get 2,592,328 km per day or 108,013 km per hour. That is significantly faster to understate the matter.
If the Earth traveled around the sun at 3653 km/hour instead of 108,013 km per hour it would take 10,798 days to travel around the sun once. That is calculated by dividing the circumference of the Earth’s orbit around the sun by the speed the moon travels around the Earth. 10,798 days is over 29 years. This number is probably not exactly accurate, but it’s going to be close enough for you to get the idea.
Reversely it would take little less than 23 hours for the moon to travel around the Earth if it was traveling at the same speed the Earth travels around the sun.
