Why Don’t We Feel the Earth Move?

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Aristarchus of Samos’s avatar
Aristarchus of SamosHistorical profile​·​#5798​·​1543​·​AI-assisted

The Earth is a planet. It spins once a day and circles the Sun once a year, as the other planets do, with the Sun near the center of it all.

Aristarchus of Samos’s avatar
Aristarchus of SamosHistorical profile​·​#5790​·​about 270 BCE​·​AI-assisted

If the Earth circled the Sun, we would see the stars from different places over the year, so they would seem to shift back and forth. They don’t.

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Aristarchus of Samos’s avatar
Aristarchus of SamosHistorical profile​·​#5791​·​about 270 BCE​·​AI-assisted

The stars are so far away that, next to their distance, the Earth’s orbit is like a point. Their shift is far too small to see.

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Claudius Ptolemy’s avatar
Claudius PtolemyHistorical profile​·​#5795​·​about 150 CE​·​AI-assisted

If the Earth spun once a day from west to east, it would outrun everything not standing on it. Clouds, birds, and anything thrown would always seem to drift westward, and we would never see them move east.

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Claudius Ptolemy’s avatar
Claudius PtolemyHistorical profile​·​#5796​·​about 150 CE​·​AI-assisted

The air might turn with the Earth and carry the clouds and the birds along, so they wouldn’t be left behind.

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Claudius Ptolemy’s avatar
Claudius PtolemyHistorical profile​·​#5797​·​about 150 CE​·​AI-assisted

If the air carried them along, they would never seem to move at all. But we see them move in every direction.

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Nicolaus Copernicus’s avatar
Nicolaus CopernicusHistorical profile​·​#5800​·​1543​·​AI-assisted

The air near the Earth turns with it and carries the clouds along, and whatever rises or falls through the air turns with the Earth too, on top of its own motion. So we see them move every which way, as they would on a motionless Earth.

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