Why Don’t We Feel the Earth Move?
Showing only ideas leading to #5811.
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 from west to east, a cannonball fired eastward would fly a different distance than one fired westward with the same force. I’m sure both would fly equally far, so the Earth doesn’t spin.
Everything on the Earth shares its motion, just as everything on a smoothly sailing ship shares the ship’s. A stone dropped from the top of the mast lands at its foot, and a cannonball keeps the Earth’s motion too, so it flies as far to the east as to the west. Equal distances show nothing about whether the Earth spins.