This is a passenger announcement. You can now book your train on Uber and get 10% back in credits to spend on Uber eats.

So you can order your own fries instead of eating everyone else's.

Trains, now on Uber. T's and C's apply. Check the Uber app. This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.

Happy New Year and if you've been away from work for a few days, you deserve some time off.

After all, you've traveled far, even if you just stayed at home.

According to NASA, just by being on the planet Earth in the last year,

you zipped about 584 million miles around the Sun

at an average speed of about 67,000 miles per hour.

Hey I wasn't speeding in my inertial reference frame.

Of course the trip was not a perfect circle as Kepler showed the Earth's orbit is an ellipse

with the Sun at one of the two focal points.

He also figured out the planet goes faster when it's at perihelian nearer the Sun than when

it's at Ephilean it's furthest distance, which would explain why

summer seems to zip by except that the seasons are a function of the tilt of

the Earth's axis, not its different distances from the sun. And the Earth rotated 365

and a quarter times during its sweep around the sun. The trip took 8,766

hours or 525, 960 minutes, or 31,557,600 seconds.

Tic-toc.

For... 600 seconds. Tic-Toc.

For Scientific Americans 60 Second Science, I'm Steve Mursky.