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u/Occidentally20 2d ago
Nobody knows with that information.
If you're on the equator the earth is 24,901 miles in circumference. You need to make that trip in 24 hours so you can probably do that maths in your head if you ignore the 901 miles on the end.
If you're above/below the Arctic/Antarctic circles in their respective summertimes you don't need to go anywhere, the sun never sets in the first place.
So between 0 and a thousand miles an hour, depending on how far North or South you are.
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u/mulch_v_bark 2d ago
It depends on your latitude. At a pole, you only have to turn in place, with no forward velocity at all. At the equator, you have to go 40,000 km (the equatorial circumference, in round numbers – I’ll round everything here) every 24 hours, so about 463 m/s or ~1,667 km/h. This is faster than most passenger planes, although Concorde for example could do it (for a few hours at a time).
If we turn it around and assume you’re you’re going say 6 knots steadily, then we can solve the latitude you need to be at: you have to go 24 hours × 6 knots = 267 km per day. Radius = C/2π, so r = 267 km / 6.283 = 42.5 km radius as a geodesic = ~89.6°.
We can frame this more exactly as a function like this: your velocity at some latitude lat to track the sun = ΩR×cos(lat) where Ω is Earth’s rotation rate and R is its radius. So ~1,667 × cos(lat) km/h. For example, at latitude north or south 45°, 1,667 × 0.707 km/h = ~1,179 km/h.
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