Why does the earth keep spinning and orbiting?

Question

I appreciate that space is a vacuum, and that it may be cuased by magnetic fields of other planets and the sun, but is our orbit and rotation slowing down at all? How is the energy required maintained?

Answer 1

The orbiting is powered by gravity, which as we know does not require any form of energy, just mass. The reason why it doesn't stop is because there's very little friction to stop us, or slow us down in any noticeable way.

Answer 2

objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.

For all practical purposes, the earth is in a vacuum; so there is no "outside" force inhibiting its momentum.
Also, because of the sun's gravity which warps the space around it, the earth follows this gravitationally warped path. Its as if the earth wants to simply travel in a straight line through space, and it would if it weren't for the bent space from the massive sun's gravity. The only "outside" force is the sun's gravity which keeps the earth on its path.
This has comparatively nothing to do with magnetism and everything to do with gravity.

If you fired a bullet into space, the bullet would continue to spin or rotate forever. Also, the bullet would follow a straight path until something got in its way or some massive body's gravity altered the bullets original straight path by warping the very space in front of it.

Answer 3

Just like the earth has gravitational force, the Sun does too. But Sun's gravitational pull is more than hundred times greater than the earth's because of its mass. Sun's mass is many times greater than earth's. Gravity is a centripetal force, meaning, it pulls other objects toward its center. (That's why a ball rolls down a cliff instead of sliding down.) So, the earth overcomes the gravity of sun by orbiting it. Since earth also has gravity, it spins rotates around itself. I think the earth is speeding up because I read somewhere that they are reducing one second in a day in continuous periods. It is speeding up because as an object keeps moving without any resistance, its momentum increases, not to mention the increasing mass of earth by the exponential increase of humans.(Human population crossed the 6 billion mark in 2005) As the momentum increases, speed increases too. for this entire process, no energy is required. Gravity powers the system.

Answer 4

Assuming it ought to be saved far off from an results of a few form, and assuming it became into stopped slowly sufficient that existence in the international weren't abruptly jolted with super tension, it might nevertheless be very undesirable information for each individual and each little thing right here. with out greater centrifugal tension from its action in orbit, the Earth would be pulled into the sunlight, with obvious effects. Now, in case you ought to magically droop the Earth in place at a particular distance from the sunlight, then you're appropriate that the seasons does not replace, yet that day and evening would nevertheless ensue. the ambience etc. is greater complicated than i in my view have the kit to confirm what result this would have on international warming, so i'm going to would desire to punt on that one. Now, as to the astounding question, the quick answer is in fact no. the only thank you to provide up the Earth's orbit would be a huge result, one super sufficient to soften the planet's crust and kill each and every little thing on land and sea. combating the planet and protecting it from being pulled into the sunlight is noticeably lots bodily impossible altogether.

Answer 5

It can be difficult to get your head round the concept of orbits. What helped me was to envisage it like this:

We are constantly falling towards the sun. However, our forward momentum is such that our fall actually takes us past the sun. From our new position, we continue to fall - and the more we keep falling, the more we keep going forward.

Does that help, or did I just make things worse?

I don't think energy is required at all. Remember that in a vacuum things keep going as long as they aren't stopped by anything else.

Answer 6

There is very little energy required to keep us moving.

Yes we are slowing down but VERY slowly.

The only thing that would slow us down would be resistance of some kind. There is almost no resistance of any sort in space other than particles from the sun, solar wind.

The initial energy came from the formation of the sun.

Answer 7

Hello,

(ANS) NOTE: Objects DONT behave the same way in the vacume of space as they do in air and under the influence of gravity.

**The earth rotates partly because it was started spinning originally & because its rotating in a vacume there is nothing to stop it from contining to spin. In space if an object is given a kick in one direction it will continue forever in that same direction unless something stops it or hinders it travel.

**In our solar system the power of the sun influences the earths rotation in terms of its graviational pull, & in terms of the solar wind (radiation) & heating effect we get from the sun.

IR

Answer 8

Jea sure looses earth of its angular momentum, and it has lost lots of it in since its beginning, but earth is quite big, with a high mass, resulting in a slow reduction of its rotation speed.

Answer 9

Newton's first Law of motion:
Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

Answer 10

in a vacuum there is no wind resistance so technically if you go at 5mph, then u will stay at that speed, no resistance, even sound cant travel in a vacuum