Why Don't We Feel the Earth Moving? Curious answers to simple questions

The movement of the Earth.

When the Earth moves, we don't realize why we move with it. Human beings can only notice relative movements, like when we travel in a vehicle and it accelerates.

The Earth also has accelerations in its movements, but they are minimal. The acceleration of gravity is always greater and this prevents us from noticing it.

If you could get into a hole that reaches the other side of the earth, it would take about 40 minutes to get there.

The Earth is moving too fast. It spins (rotates) at a speed of about 1,000 miles per hour and orbits the Sun at a speed of about 67,000 miles per hour.

Actually, the Earth moves in its slowest orbit in July and fastest in January, but there's not much difference.

We don't feel any movement because these speeds are constant. The Earth's rotation and translation speeds remain the same so we don't feel any acceleration or deceleration.

You can only feel movement if you change the speed. For example, if you are in a car that is moving at a constant speed on a smooth surface, you will not feel much movement. However, when the car accelerates or brakes, you do feel the movement.

The Movement

The rotation movement of the Earth on itself is called"rotation".
It is a movement made along the earth's axis, from West to East - that is, in a counterclockwise direction - and lasts 23 hours and 56 minutes and 4 seconds.

The angular speed at which our planet spins translates into a linear speed of 1,666 kilometers per hour on the Equator line.

However, we cannot feel this speed of vertigo because we are part of the same system. I mean, we're on the move just like the planet.

In fact, it is only 0.3% of the force of gravity, which is what keeps us on Earth. In other words, if the Earth did not turn, you would weigh 0.3% more (now you have an answer by the time someone asks you" what has the planet done for you?").

And since the speed of rotation is constant, there are no accelerations or decelerations that give us the sensation of movement, just as we do not perceive movement when we travel in any vehicle at a constant speed and without jolting.

The diameter of the Planet.

Since the planet has a diameter of 12,735 kilometers, not counting seas and mountains, our planet can be said to be quite smooth.

The core of the globe, composed primarily of iron, rotates somewhat faster than the earth's mantle and crust. And in this phenomenon, known as"super-rotation", lies the explanation of why the Earth can generate a magnetic field.

The highest point above the earth's surface is Mount Everest, which measures 8,848 meters. However, when measured from its base, the highest mountain on our planet is the Mauna Kea (Hawaii).

The earth is moving

The Earth is in continuous motion. It moves, with the rest of the planets and bodies of the Solar System, around the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. However, this movement has little effect on our daily lives.

Without the rotation, the days wouldn't be the same. Without the rotating movement, the day would last 6 months, and the night would last another 6 months, which would have catastrophic consequences for animals and plants, and most likely for us.

Moreover, the planet would become an almost perfect sphere, without the speed of rotation, this flattening of the poles would disappear.

In fact, we would have a single continent, with the oceans redistributing and flooding many regions of the planet, covering the poles.

What would happen if the Earth stopped spinning?

If such a thing should occur, Newton's Principle of Inertia or First Law, which states:"If a body is at rest or in uniform rectilinear motion, it will remain in that state, until a force acts upon it.

If the earth stopped spinning suddenly, everything on the surface of the Earth, at the equator, would come out laterally at more than 1,600 km/hour (this speed would be lower and lower the closer you get to the pole, at 10 degrees, the lower it would be, the more you would only be 285 km/h and at the pole itself you would hardly feel it).

The Earth's escape velocity is 40,000 km/h, so we wouldn't get thrown into space, but the damage would be terrible anyway. The oceans would move laterally at 1,600 km/h (tsunamis do not even approach this speed, of course).

Why doesn't the Earth stop spinning?

The Earth does not stop spinning simply because there is nothing to stop it. Millions of years ago, our solar system was nothing but a cloud of dust.

At one point, a powerful and unbalanced force activated it. Its center began to collapse on itself, and the particles around it began to collide with each other.

The energy emanating from all these movements caused the structure to flatten out and begin to rotate. Little by little, the center became the Sun.

The particles around it clustered into what are now planets, and have been in perpetual motion ever since.

What causes the Earth's rotation.

To explain why the Earth rotates, it is important to go back to the birth of the Solar System.

After the Big Bang, a large cloud of dust, rock, and gas formed, spinning at high speed, composed of helium, hydrogen and heavy elements.

As it is not a homogeneous mass, its growth caused gravitational forces and asymmetries that, according to the laws of conservation of angular momentum, resulted in rounded planets, whose inertia keeps them rotating uninterruptedly.

Unless another event occurs that disrupts that movement. As our planet was born spinning, it is logical that it continues to spin on its axis.

Factors affecting rotational speed

External factors influence this movement, so each planet has its own period of rotation. Some of them are:

The gravity of the Sun: This process slows down the speed with which the different planets of the system rotate. The closer you get to this star, the greater the influence. For example, in what Mercury spins on its axis, the Earth spins 58 times.

Formation speed of a planet: the greater the gravitational collapse, the greater the conservation of angular momentum.

Meteorites: the impacts of these bodies can slow down or slow down planetary motion.
Influence of the Moon: The gravitational influence of our natural satellite affects the tides of the Earth, whose tugs slow down its rotation period.

Curiosities of the planet earth

The Earth's core - composed primarily of iron - rotates somewhat faster than the earth's mantle and crust.

This phenomenon known as superrotation is between 0.3 and 0.5 degrees each year (meaning that in about 900 years the earth's center will have completed one rotation more than the rest of the planet). Here is the explanation of why the Earth can generate a magnetic field.

1. The earth does not take long to rotate on its own axis 24 hours, but rather takes 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds.
2. It has a gravity of 9,807 m/s² which allows us to stay on land.
   There are 20 to 40 tons of material falling on the planet enough to fill a six-story building in one year.
3. Its surface area is 510.1 million km².
4. The Earth is spinning and not only that, it also moves around the Sun at 107,826 km per hour.
5. The Earth's rotation speed is reduced by 17 milliseconds every 100 years, so that in about 140 million years the duration of the day will be 25 hours.
6. The driest place on Earth is the Atacama Desert in Chile and Peru.
7. The age of the Earth is estimated at 5 billion years, of which there have been 200 million years of life.
8. 70% of the surface is covered with water. Of all the liquid on the planet, 97% is salt water and 3% is sweet water.
9. There are approximately 7500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of sand in the earth.
10. Between 100 and 300 tons of cosmic dust falls on the earth every day.

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