Does the sun alter the rotation of the earth on its own axis?

Question

Does the orbit of the earth around the sun in any way alter the rotation of the earth itself?

Answer 1

In fact, it does alter the rotation of the earth on its own axis because of tidal forces. The sun is causing the earth's rotation to slow down over the billions of years, but since the moon is a lot closer, the moon is chiefly responsible for having slowed the earth's daily rotation from about 10 hours to the present day 24 hours, the sun's contribution being relatively negligible.

Answer 2

Yes, by the tides.

The earth rotates on its axis, and the speed of this rotation is highly constant. The planet's vast quantity of angular momentum prevents any kind of abrupt change in the day's length. If somehow it could change, the heat released would liquify the continents.

Over hugely long periods of time, however, the earth is slowed by the tides. Those bulges of water (and also considerably less noticeable bulges in the crust) consume energy and over hundreds of millions of years will gradually slow the rotation perceptably. Six hundred million years ago, the days were shorter than today. That's one way.

Another, a different kind of alteration, is precession of the equinoxes. The earth's axis moves like a spinning gyroscope top that wobbles as it starts to slow. Imagine the earth spinning on a floor, balanced on the south pole. (It's an imperfect analogy, but for now, just imagine.) The north pole wobbles in a circular manner, sweeping out a conical-shape in the sky.

This wobble takes about 26,000 to complete a circle until the north pole again points toward the same place in the sky, roughly the star Polaris. The earth's rotation does not slow perceptably during this time, but the stars of the night sky will seem to shift position because the earth itself is wobbling.

A third way is not a real change at all, but an apparent one. It's called the Equation of Time.

The earth spins on its axis at a constant speed. Nothing can change it significantly. However, because the earth moves in its orbit around the sun faster at some times of year than others, it makes sunrise and sunset seem to happen earlier or later than they should.

In fact, around this time of year, December-January, the effect is most noticeable. The earth is moving faster than average in its orbit right now. Without going too deeply into the mechanics, this has the effect of making sunrise and sunset happen about 1/3 of a minute later each day, cumulatively, than they should. That's why, here in New York, the latest sunrise of the year happens not on December 21st, but on January 5th.

As you understand, all this is completely different from the earth's trip around the sun once a year. We speed up and slow down at different times during earth's yearly journey around the sun, all easily calculated by Kepler's laws of planetary motion.
The combination of sun and large planets also affect the orbit in other ways, which is why we add a "leap second" on New Years Eve every few years.

Answer 3

While the sun causes great gravitational force on the earth to keep it in orbit, that force does not generate the rotational motion of the earth on its axis.

Answer 4

extremely some nasty issues. first of all the earth is slowing its rotation, between the justifications clocks are adjusted each and every hundred years. The earths magnetic field is led to with the aid of the rotation of the molten middle of the earth, which rotates speedier than the planet with the aid of the way. with out the magnetic field we would be bombarded with the aid of cosmic rays and die from radiation exposure. If it would quit by surprise, which it could no longer, we would abruptly be shifting at approximately 1500 mph over the floor of the earth. it would additionally mess with the climate, and the jet circulation it is led to with the aid of temperature adjustments because of the fact the earth rotates, between different reasons. Ever observe how the wind continually selections up merely because of the fact the sunlight contraptions ? additionally gravity does no longer get replaced, the mass of the planet might proceed to be the comparable.