Thinking Fast

So John Paul's loving sister Chesney (age 5) says today,

"Daddy do the little messages from our brains to our fingers move faster than the sun."

I blinked. "Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure they do. Most electrical things move much faster than large bodies, even fast ones."

"So there's something in us that moves faster than the sun," she says.

That's pretty flippin' awesome. I've never thought about the relative speed of body processes to celestial processes.

Sadly, turns out I totally mislead her. I would have thought nerve impulses went about as fast as other electrical signals (a bit slower because of the wetness, but still). After all it only takes the postassium channel membrane like 2 milli-seconds (0.002 seconds) to switch polarities and return. (link) And lightening can move at about the speed of light.

However, it looks like the sun beats nerve impulses by a huge margin. 220 km/s (NASA) vs. 130m/sec (OHSU).

Still, it's the validity of her reasoning and the creativity of the line of thought that counts, not my false--but, I maintain, rationally justified--premise I supplied.

I still wonder if there isn't *something* electrical in our nervous system which approaches the speed of light.