Page:Illustrated Astronomy.pdf/40

 The Earth is the third planet in the Solar System counting from the Sun. It is the largest planet among the rocky ones (Mercury, Venus, and Mars), but smaller than gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) and it is located about 150 million kilometers from the Sun. This enormous distance means that the light coming from the Sun doesn’t reach the Earth immediately, but takes around eight minutes, even though light is the fastest thing that exists! Since it travels to almost 300,000 kilometers per second.

If, for any reason, the Sun disappeared or stopped shinning, we would take eight minutes to know it, and the Earth would keep orbiting along that time to continue then traveling in a straight line into space at 30 km/s since the Sun would exert no force upon it. 40 • • •