Seconds Facts
Cats purr at 26 cycles per second, the same as an idling diesel engine
One hundred thousand cubic feet of water pours over the Niagara Falls every second
A bumble bee flaps its wings 160 beats per second. A dragonfly flaps its wings 20 to 40 times a second, bees and houseflies 200 times, some mosquitoes 600 times, and a tiny gnat 1,000 times
A fly can react to something it sees and change direction in 30 milliseconds
Biologists have discovered that cockroaches can change course as many as 25 times in one second, making them the most nimble animals known
The American lobster can move through the water at a rate of up to 25 feet a second
The Pacific equatorial countercurrent flows eastward toward South America, carrying up to 40 million tons of warm water with it every second
The sound of thunder travels about 1,100 feet per second
A space vehicle must move at a rate of at least 7 miles per second to escape Earth's gravitational pull
Barnard's star is approaching the Sun at a speed of 87 miles/second
Because it is pouring energy out into space so rapidly, the Sun is a weight equivalent to a million elephants to a million elephants every second
Some neutron stars spin 600 times a second, which is as fast as a dentist's drill
If you attempted to count the stars in a galaxy at a rate of one every second, it would take around 3,000 years to count them all
Traveling at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, light take 6 hours to travel from Pluto to Earth
Tiny dust particles surround a comet. They are swept into a long tail by the solar wind, which consists of subatomic particles speeding from the sum at speed of hundred of miles per second