At what speed does a point on the earth's surface travel at, as the earth revolves ?

Question

If you stand still, at what speed would you be travelling - relying solely on the earths rotation.

Answer 1

It depends where on Earth you are.
At the North Pole, you're not moving at all (at least in this frame of reference - you're still moving with the Earth round the Sun, with the Sun round the Milky Way, and so on), just spinning on your axis.

At the Equator, you travel the circumference of the Earth, approximately 40,075km, in 23 hours 56 minutes (a siderial day), giving you a speed of 1674 km/h or 1,040 mph.

At other points, your speed will be somewhere in between.

Answer 2

This is a hard one, because for a really accurate answer, it depends on where abouts you are.

at the equator, you get the full tilt bogie, being the furthest distance away from the core, but at the poles, it is slower/

also effects like El Nino have slowed down the rotation of the Earth - not by much - it can increased the length of the day by 600-700 microseconds ( 0.0006 to 0.0007 seconds). The length of day is monitored by using trans-atlantic Very Long Base Line Interferometry; a technique pioneered and still used by astronomers to study distant quasars.

The bottom line is that since the 1930's astronomers have known that the rotation of the earth is modified by seasonal changes in weather systems.

At the equator, the circumference of the Earth is 40,070 kilometers, and the day is 24 hours long so the speed is 1670 kilometers/hour ( 1070 miles/hr). This decreases by the cosine of your latitude so that at a latitude of 45 degrees, cos(45) = .707 and the speed is .707 x 1670 = 1180 kilometers/hr. You can use this formula to find the speed of rotation at any latitude.

but that is just the surface, if you consider the wjole planet, then... Orbited by its companion, the Moon, the Earth travels at more than 65,000 mph (105,000 kph), covering millions of miles each year as it journeys through space. this is an average speed of revolution about the sun is 29.8 kilometers per second, or 18 1/2 miles a second.

so if you were rotating at spring, in the same direction as the earth is travelling, at the equator, then add 1670 kmph to the 105,000 kmp speed, = 106,670 kmph or 66,107 mph. if you are moving in the opposite direction, it is 103,320 kmph / 63,993 mph.

and that is without the slight speed that we are rotating on the arm of our galaxy.

The Sun, which is located relatively far from the nucleus, moves at an estimated speed of about 225 km per second (140 miles per second) in a nearly circular orbit..

Answer 3

Basic Answer
The circumference of the Earth at the equator is 25,000 miles. The Earth rotates in about 24 hours. Therefore, if you were to hang above the surface of the Earth at the equator without moving, you would see 25,000 miles pass by in 24 hours, at a speed of 25000/24 or just over 1000 miles per hour.

Multiply by cosine of your latitude to see how fast the Earth is rotating where you are.

Earth is also moving around the Sun at about 67,000 miles per hour.

Advanced Answer

If by "turning" you mean the rotation of the Earth about its axis (where axis just means the straight line between the North and South poles) it is quite easy to figure out how fast any part of the Earth's surface is moving.

The Earth rotates once in a few minutes under a day (23 hours 56 minutes 04. 09053 seconds). This is called the sidereal period (which means the period relative to stars). The sidereal period is not exactly equal to a day because by the time the Earth has rotated once, it has also moved a little in its orbit around the Sun, so it has to keep rotating for about another 4 minutes before the Sun seems to be back in the same place in the sky that it was in exactly a day before.

An object on the Earth's equator will travel once around the Earth's circumference (40,075.036 kilometers) each sidereal day. So if you divide that distance by the time taken, you will get the speed. An object at one of the poles has hardly any speed due to the Earth's rotation. (A spot on a rod one centimeter in circumference for example, stuck vertically in the ice exactly at a pole would have a speed of one centimeter per day!). The speed due to rotation at any other point on the Earth can be calculated by multiplying the speed at the equator by the cosine of the latitude of the point. (If you are not familiar with cosines, I wouldn't worry about that now, but if you can find a pocket calculator which has a cosine button you might like to try taking the cosine of your own latitude and multiplying that by the rotation speed at the equator to get your own current speed due to rotation!).

The Earth is doing a lot more than rotating, although that is certainly the motion we notice most, because day follows night as a result. We also orbit the Sun once a year. The circumference of the Earth's orbit is about 940 million kilometers, so if you divide that by the hours in a year you will get our orbital speed in kilometers per hour. We are also moving with the Sun around the center of our galaxy and moving with our galaxy as it drifts through intergalactic space!

Paul Butterworth
and David Palmer for the Ask an Astrophysicist Team

Answer 4

1667cos x kilometres/hour, where x is your latitude. So if you're on the Equator your speed is 1667 km/hr. In London, 50 degrees north, 1072 km/hr, and at the north or south pole, zero because cos 90 is zero and you're on the Earth's axis of rotation. That's why rocket launching sites are as close to the Equator as possible; the rocket gets a speed boost from the Earth's rotation. America uses Cape Canaveral, Russia uses Tyuratam and the European Space Agency uses Kourou in French Guyana.

Answer 5

well no one spotted the problem with the question. Speed is a relative measurement. So it depends on the frame of reference.

If you take a line from the centre of the Earth to a Star it's about 100 miles an hour due to just the Earth's Rotation.

If you take a fixed line from the Sun to a distant star then it's about 66,000 mph due to the Earth travelling round the Sun.

If you take a line from the centre of our galaxy to a distant one I believe it's nearer 250,000 mph. That's the rotational velocity around the centre of the galaxy.

I suspect the answer you want is the first. But remember you must quote your frame of reference.

Answer 6

The Earth is ~25,000 miles in circumference and revolves as quickly as an afternoon, so it extremely is revolving approximately a million,000 mph on the floor. that would not sound sluggish to me. It has to do with relativity, that when you consider that gravity holds us to the floor, we revolve on the comparable value. think of throwing a baseball on an airplane. on the airplane it may seem to commute with a speed of say seventy 5 mph, yet to an observer on the floor (assuming they might see the form) the baseball could seem to be traveling with a speed of, say, 550 mph. action will become perceptible just to those idle or shifting in yet another direction.

Answer 7

A little over 1000 miles an hour at the equator.
Type in "earth speed " in your browser to find out more.

Answer 8

It depends upon what point you are standing on. If you are at one of the geographic poles, you'd just spin around. If you are at the equator, you'd be zipping along at approx 1,000mph. [Circumference at equator is approx 24,000miles; it takes approx 24 hours to revolve once upon its axis. So, 24,000m/24h=1,000mph.]
This is why all space agencies build their launch facilities as close to the equator as they can. It's easier to get a rocket to go from near 1,000mph as a start velocity to near 17,000mph in orbit.

Answer 9

about 40 km per second

Answer 10

it is about 30km per second.

i have calculated it myself and checked in the books too.
it is correct.