If a helicopter could stay aloft and stationary for 24 hours would the entire world pass under it?

Question

I have always wondered if a helicopter could stay aloft in stationary position long enough would the world be moving underneath it such that it would "go around the world" in 24 hours....

Answer 1

Not if stationary means stationary with respect to the air. The earth sweeps the atmosphere along with it, so the helicopter comes along for the ride. So no, the helicopter can't circumnavigate that way.

Answer 2

Heres somthing to think about, if you were in that helicopter, you would naturally want to stay over some fixed point because your brain would want to 'think' its just hovering. So you would naturally inch your way forward as the earth rotates with you so that in your mind, you are stationary. In actuality, you would be canceling out the effect of the earth rotating below you. If there was absolutely no air currents causing you to drift, I do think you are correct, you would end up somewhere else in the world, however, you have to realize how slow the earth rotates. To you, it would feel like you went nowhere in a hurry. Watch the sun in the sky, it goes up and down in 12 hours (more or less), but for after one hour of staring, it seems to just stand in place the whole time. I think the reason you might think this does not seem right is becauase of the large time scale involved that it would take to stay up there for 24 hours. A typical flight from the east coast to europe is around 6 hours, but here you are fighting wind, drag, weight etc. I think this would be an example of the coriolis effect, the earth spinning about its axis. I have read that trains experience effects of the earth rotating as they travel longs distances north-south. This is because the earth rotates in one constant direction. The result is that it wears one side of the tracks more than the other. This is an example of what your talking about. The train is just going north south, but the earth is trying to make it rotate east-west, thus wearing out the track, just like the earth would rotate below you, and you could land at some other location. I would think that the main difference is where on earth you are. If you were near the poles, you could take off and land back where you started in a shorter distance, whereas near the equator, you would travel the greatest distance. This would mean you traveled fastest along the equator, since you did one revolution in the same amount of time as up at the pole, but you went a greater distance.

Dr. H

Answer 3

I hope this would happen and save the earth from greenhouse effect by less fuel consumption.