Why Don’t We Feel the Earth Move?
Showing only ideas leading to #5800.
See chronicle·See most recent related ideasThe Earth is a planet. It spins once a day and goes around the Sun once a year, as the other planets do. Mars moves on an ellipse, a stretched circle, with the Sun at one of the ellipse’s two foci, so that the line from the Sun to the planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times, and the other planets, I expect, move the same way.
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.
The air might turn with the Earth and carry the clouds and the birds along, so they wouldn’t be left behind.
If the air carried them along, they would never seem to move at all. But we see them move in every direction.
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.