why the earth is keeps rotating and not stalling?

Question

I wonder why the earth not stalling or slowing down or why not rotating faster and faster!

Answer 1

Actually, the Earth is slowing down, albeit very slowly. The forces slowing it down (tidal effects, galactic space dust, etc) are small compared to what would be required to stop it completely.

Below is a site with more information on this interesting topic.

Answer 2

The only way a rotating object will slow down is if there is some sort of torque acting on it to make it slow down. Otherwise is just "coasts" freely forever. In space there's no friction like there is on a spinning basketball for example.

There is a small torque on the earth caused by the moon which does slow it down a tiny bit. That's why we hear about those 'leap seconds' being added at the end of the year pretty often.

Another way for the earth's rotation speed to change is if its shape changes. Just like a figure skater pulling in their arms and speeding up, the earth can do the same thing on a smaller scale if an earthquake shifts some material into a new position. But the effect is tiny because the earth is so enormous and earthquakes only move a tiny fraction of the whole mass of the earth.

Answer 3

The Earth's rotation IS slowing down...by some 2.2 seconds every 100,000 years. The main cause of this slowing is friction from ocean tides and the way our moon tugs and pulls at our planet. If the current slowing rate continued without any change (which it won't) Earth would stop rotating in about 4-billion years, just about when our Sun will swell into a red-giant star and wipe out our planet.

Answer 4

Actually it is slowing down. The pull of the moon causes the oceans to move around the earth (tides). This motion in turn causes friction, which slows the earths rotation. Eventually the moon will settle into a geosynchronous orbit, so only one hemisphere of the world will ever be able to see the moon. Additionally this bulge from the tides has the effect of transferring energy from our rotation into the moons rotation pushing it further and further away from the earth's gravitational pull.

Answer 5

Conservation of energy.

A object in motion will maintain that motion unless something exerts a force upon it.

Because there is nothing to slow it down or speed it up (noticably) the earth keeps spinning.

Just like your car doing 65, when pop the transmission in neutral, there won't be much change from second to second, and that is with the air and friction slowing it down.

Things tend to want to keep going.

Answer 6

it is slowing down....the dinosaurs saw 22 hour days....when the earth first formed the days were about 6 hours long also the moon is slowly drifting away, at the rate your fingernail grows the moon is becoming more distant to earth because these things happen on a scale so much larger than a human lifespan they are difficult to perceive so you figure they don't happen at all but the earth has slowed down substantially over the 4,500,000,000 years its been around the average human life span is 70-80 just to put it in perspective

Answer 7

The reason is conservation of angular momentum. Which derives from the fact that the laws of physics are invariant with repect to rotations.

Answer 8

If you want a non-text book and interesting answer...watch the movie "The Core." It's an action movie, not the greatest ever but pretty good and you do learn the answers to those type of questions amidst excitement and action...(it's a little like Armageddon)

Answer 9

the forces on earth are stable because the amount of force dosent change

Answer 10

ITS ALL BEACAUSE OF CONSERVATION OF MOMENTUM.
EARTH HAS ROTATING AND STOPPING IT WOULD REQUIRE LARGE AMOUNT OF ENERGY. IMAGINE THROWN OUT OF UR SEAT TO A RANGE OF 3-4 KM AWAY