Perihelion 2016

Today -- Jan. 2, 2016 -- at 22:49 UTC (17:49 Eastern (US) time), the Earth will be at perihelion, the point in its orbit where it's closest to the Sun. At that moment the center of the Earth will be 147,100,176 km (91,403,811 miles) from the center of the Sun. Give or take. That's still a long way. At highway speeds it would take over 160 years to drive there in a car (I don't even want to think about how you'd pave that), and almost 19 years to fly there in a typical commercial jet. I hope the...