I answered this yesterday, but...
What makes the Earth Spin...
Angular Momentum. Think of a figure skater pulling their arms closer to their body while spinning, sudennly they are spinning VERY fast, then they let their arms out, and they slow down. This is because the arms still have the same amount of rotational energy as they did when they were further from the body, but when they are pulled close, they don't have as far to go to complete one rotation... the radius and circumference are smaller but the distance covered is the same over the same amount of time. This means faster rotation.
How does that have anything to do with the Earth? Simple. When the Earth formed, it formed by collecting bits of matter from space, and these bits of matter, ranging from dust to huge asteroids and larger, were all like tiny arms, adding rotational energy to the earth as they came in closer and stuck.
Right now, the moon is slowing the earth's rotation as it slowly moves away from the Earth--again, this is the same process. How can this be when the moon doesn't even touch the Earth? Gravity. Gravity makes the earth and moon behave almost as if they were touching. The short explanation is that the center of gravity of the earth-moon system lies just below the surface of the earth, causing tides. Since the moon is moving away, it requires less orbital velocity to maintain it's orbit, and so the tides slow the earth more as the moon's orbital speed slows.
Eventually, the earth and Moon may both be tide-locked to each other, and this will happen long before the earth is tide locked to the sun (the tides have slowed rotation of the earth to the point where it always has one side facing the moon (or sun)).
What makes the earth not stop spinning?
As mentioned before, angular momentum. The earth's surface can be slowed, but that energy has to go somewhere--it goes to speeding up the orbital velocity of the moon, which is why the moon is moving further from the earth...
The earth is moving around the sun because of the way the sun and all the other stuff in the solar system formed--from a cloud of gas and dust that collapsed into a spinning disk. The mechanics of the whole thing is still being learned and debated. As long as the Earth keeps moving in a straight line perpendicular to a line drawn between the Earth and the Sun, the Earth will continue to fall toward the Sun (by gravity) at exactly the same speed that it is flying perpendicular, and thus, like a ball on a string, it will follow a curved path around the sun.
2006-11-25 02:30:16
·
answer #1
·
answered by ~XenoFluX 3
·
0⤊
0⤋
one motion is the inertia force making the planets rotate around their axis, this is caused by debris piling up on a center of gravity, and accelerated in a way ice-skaters accelerate if they pull their arms near the body, while rotating
this same process is active in the planets pathes around the sun with the slight diffence that the dust starts piling up in the center forming a mass large enough to ignit becoming the sun and the rest remains in a disk-like structure where it piles up on itself forming planets.
these initial motions remain as long as there is no significant change in mass in the entire system.
later lets say after a few billion years almost all dust has been collected by more solid structures like comets or planets which still travel with these motions caused on buildup.
since masses are so hughe it'll take a very long time to loose motion to gravitational friction.
In case bodies rotate around each other very near (earth moon system for example) the loss of momentum due to friction is high enough to slow both masses that much that the lower mass stops its own movement around its axis over time, with the result that the moon is always showing us the same side
2006-11-25 13:48:39
·
answer #2
·
answered by blondnirvana 5
·
0⤊
0⤋
it is the gravitational pull of the centre of the orbit that pulls the revolving stars,planets around it
2006-11-25 10:16:09
·
answer #3
·
answered by jak 3
·
0⤊
0⤋
well, inertia... they are spinning because they are spinning...
(when clouds of dust and gas accrete into objects, they generally acquire some spin as they "fall in" to the accretion. like a spinning figure skater pulling in her arms, the every so slowly-spinning cloud of dust and debris becomes a noticeably rotating planet)
2006-11-25 10:15:30
·
answer #4
·
answered by Anonymous
·
0⤊
0⤋