The other day I realized that because velocity is a vector (unlike speed), my lifetime total velocity (relative to the environment we live in) is merely the distance I am from where I was born, divided by my age, considered along the direction.
There are many humans for which their lifetime velocity is zero. But I wonder who are the people for whom its scalar component is greatest?
Since no one has died very far away (on the Moon, or really beyond low orbit), the record holders would be people who’ve lived a short amount of time and gone all the way around the Earth. I’m sure there are some tragic babies like that. Maybe they were born with special needs and work airlifted to a better hospital and didn’t make it. But what about before the introduction of advanced transportation, technology? Who were these people who had the highest velocity?
They were teenage Polynesians, who had 1000 miles in a boat and then died. They were people who lived to be young teenagers and spent almost that entire time in migration, moving in the same direction.
Before advanced transportation, technology, no human beings value ever exceeded that of birds and migrating sea creatures. But at some point, finally, the earthly record for microscopically large organisms was taken by human being. When was that? Who was that?
I am assuming it was the youngest aviator to ever go a substantial distance and die upon arrival or soon after.
But we don’t know who it is. Because even though our culture is obsessed with world records and cases, this particular record is one that we somehow never decided to keep track of.