Could one leave Vladivostok by air at 8 a.m. and land in Moscow at 8 a.m. on the same day?
I'm not talking through my hat. We can really do that. The answer lies in the 9-hour difference in Vladivostok and Moscow zonal times. If our plane covers the distance between the two cities in these 9 hours, it will land in Moscow at the very same time at which it took off from Vladivostok. Considering that the distance is roughly 9,000 kilometres, we must fly at a speed of 9,000:9 = 1,000 km. p.h., which is quite possible today.
To "outrace the Sun" (or rather the earth) in Arctic latitudes, one can go much more slowly. Above Novaya Zemlya, on the 77th parallel, a plane doing about 450 km. p.h. would cover as much as a definite point on the surface of the globe would cover in an identical space of time in the process of the earth's axial rotation. If you were flying in such a plane you would see the sun suspended in immobility. It would never set, provided, of course, that your plane was moving in the proper direction.
It is still easier to "outrace the Moon" in its revolution around the earth. It takes the moon 29 times longer to spin round the earth than it takes the earth to complete one rotation (we are comparing, naturally, the so-called "angular", and not linear, velocities). So any ordinary steamer making 15-18 knots could "outrace the Moon" oven in the moderate latitudes.
Mark Twain mentions this in his Innocents Abroad. When sailing across the Atlantic, from New York to the Azores "... who had balmy summer weather, and nights that were even finer than the days. We had the phenomenon of a full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens at the same hour every night. The reason for this singular conduct on the part of the mo on did not occur to us at first, but it did afterward when we reflected that we were gaming about twenty minutes every day, because we were going east so fast we gained just enough every day to keep along with the moon. "
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