Here Comes the Sun--at 135 Miles per Second

A new technique for measuring cosmic motion has found that Sol is clipping along at an eye-popping 135 miles per second in its orbit of the Milky Way. Astronomers using the Long Baseline Array radio telescope system to make the most precise measurement ever of the solar system orbit found that--even at that speed--it takes the sun and its family of planets 226 million years to circle the center of its home galaxy.

That means that the last time the sun was at this point in its orbit of the Milky Way, dinosaurs ruled the world and human beings were not yet on the scene,astronomer Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reported Wednesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II