Why is the earth on a 24 hour rotation?

Question

Would it be an improvement if the earth rotated every 36 or 48 hours? Why is everything so orderly and precise?

Answer 1

The 24hr rotation was agreed with the Planets' Union after arbitration.

Answer 2

It is 24 hours because we choose on arbitrary system of labeling time and that is what we call lengths of it. The earth rotation is really not a "why", it just is a fact. If you could lengthen it, all of the natural rhythms developed over millions of years would be thrown out of whack, life systems, weather and climate systems, everything. It might clean up the CO2 problem but the other issues would be more immediate and dire, climate would be more negatively effected. The only reason you see order and precision is that you grow use to a thing. You can't have a 12 hour day today and 30 hours tomorrow. The universe follows rules, and those rules are why it is the way it is. In another universe time (4th dimension) might be short changed. Your life would only be a minute or never. Or 2nd dimension (width) would be missing and in a 2 dimensional physical universe life does not arise because molecules and atoms can not exist with out 3 dimensions of being, and one of duration.

Answer 3

There is some confusion here between two different measures of a day: the solar day and the sidereal day.

The solar day is the average time it takes for the earth to rotate with respect to the sun. It was agreed to divide this time period into 24 hours by convention. At one point during the French revolution, there was a proposal to re-define this time period to have 10 hours (so each hour was longer), but that wasn't very convenient.

The sidereal day is the average time it takes for the earth to rotate with respect to the distant stars. Since the earth is going around the sun at the same time it is rotating, it takes slightly less time for this rotation that for the solar one. In fact, this rotation takes 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds. The different is not related to the leap year. Instead it is related to the fact that the earth rotates 366 1/4 times with repesct to the stars each year, but only 365 1/4 times with respect to the sun. That (1/4) is why leap years are needed.

Answer 4

If it's any consolation, the Earth is actually on a 23 hour, 56 minute, 4 second rotation. But instead of that throwing the world into chaos, we just use leap years.

The organisms of the earth have simply adapted to a 24-hour day, which is why it is so orderly and ideal for us. I can guarantee you that if it had been a 30-hour day organisms would have evolved to better fit that mold.

Answer 5

Is this a joke?

The earth rotates, end of story. As the joke goes, someone said "let's call it a day".

Mankind decided to break it into 24 bits called hours, in turn divided into 60 minutes, in turn divided into 60 seconds. Probably becuase these numbers have lots of divisors, eg 24=2*3*4, 60=3*4*5.
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Answer 6

Random chance.

And it is not so orderly and precise as you think. Earth's rotation is slowing down for example.

Answer 7

Earth is spinning around 1000 M.P.H.
Distance around equater is about 24000 miles.

Time all around the planet is mainley to keep track of one full day anywhere on the planet as days are recorded and months etc.. mainly for seasonal changes, when to plant when to harvest etc....

Answer 8

i agree, i say we bring this up to the earth rotation committee and see if we can make this darned thing change!

Answer 9

because it takes 24 hrs to rotate itself