If the earth spins at 1000mph around the equator how come the sky does not seem to reflect this?

Question

Does our whole atmosphere spin as well along with the earth? If you look at the skies sometimes it looks like the clouds are very still, not much wind, granted but if its the actual earth that spins, solid matter, how does the sky follow? or does it not?

That is what I thought, thanks. I could not work out why that was the situation though, but of course no friction in space, it all makes sense now. Thanks for the flurry of answers though. Namaste

Answer 1

The whole atmosphere is spinning with the earth. The whole system spins. There is nothing out there to cause friction to slow the atmosphere so you need to think of the whole system as a globe or ball much bigger than just the earth itself.

Answer 2

The earth's spin does affect weather patterns. Huge moving masses of air have their ground sides swirled around at a different speed than their top sides. Then their overall lateral motion as a whole system moving across the surface has their sides bumping into other moving systems. All this pushing and twisting sometimes results in big storms with easily discernible rotational patterns known as hurricanes. As to why you sometimes see th clouds zipping along or stationary is because of the distance between them and you. Imagine you're going down the highway in your car. A good bit away in the distance is a tall skyscraper. Even though you know you are moving along at around 70mph, and you know the building is standing still, it looks like it takes you forever to get beyond it. As if it is moving forward with you after all. It's simply a matter of perspective. Think of a plane flying overhead in the same direction you're going. Again you're only moving at 70mph and the plane is doing a few hundred miles an hour. You would think it would just zip right over you and leave you behind quickly, but it seems to take a long time, while someone doing 80mph passes you in an instant. Part of it is that it is flying a longer distance than your driving--the arc through the sky is longer than the arc you're driving on the ground. But, mostly, it is again a matter of perspective.
Lastly, the earth does NOT spin at 66,000 mph. The circumference around the equator is just around 24,000 miles. [The circumference around the equator is slightly longer distance than the circumference around any longitiduinal line since the spin makes it bulge a bit.] It takes just about 24 hours to spin around once on its axis. 24,000/24= 1,000mph at the equator.

Answer 3

Just a correction that I remember from school. The earth actually spins at 66600 MPH (18.5 MPS (Miles Per Second)).

If you think about it: If a tennis ball was spinning at say 10 miles an hour and next to it was a beach ball was spinning the same the tennis ball would look like it was spinning faster. So if you think about the size of the world and the fact that it takes a full 24 hours to complete 1 full spin.

Also the sky is part of the worlds atmosphere and so spins with the planet so you would not see anything in the sky. That is all the things that protect us.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

The atmosphere creates friction when it flows across the surface, so it would tend to stop and turn with the Earth if there were no other influences.

But there are.  If the Earth did not rotate, the air would be heated and rise around the point beneath the Sun and flow over to the dark side, where it would cool and fall again.  Rotation of the Earth means that the hot zone is a band near the equator rather than a point, so the circulation goes from the equator to the poles.  Also, the rotation of the Earth means that a parcel of air flowing from the pole (0 MPH rotational speed) to the equator (roughly 1050 MPH rotational speed) gets pulled to the west (Coriolis force) and a parcel of air flowing from equator to pole gets pulled east.

Answer 5

Yes, the atmosphere travels along with the earth. And the sky, at least the night sky does reflect it. The stars rise and set just like the sun during the daytime. Just most people don't sit still long enough to see it.

Answer 6

If we could see the stars, they would move with the planet, and at night, they do. The sky is an illusion of different layers of atmosphere that we see from the planet. It's like a curtain. It's made from the sunlight bouncing off the atmosphere, so all we see is the curtain. At night, when the sun's light is gone and we can see into space, we do see the stars and moon move. The sun, as well, moves with the movement of the planet. Actually, it's us moving by the sun and moon.

Answer 7

It spins generally in line with the Earth's rotation.

Remember that the atmosphere in relation to the Earth is less than an appleskin thickness in relation to the apple, so it doesn't take much to make it "stick" to the rotating planet.

Answer 8

yes. the atmosphere spins along with the earth.

Answer 9

because the earth is so large.

a smaller object spinning at the same rate a larger object spins seems to spin faster.

try it out.

Answer 10

I doubt anyone could measure the speed the earth rotates I don't know. But the reason the earth doesn't reflect this is due to the size of the earth.

Not only that, but if the earth was small and we spun at 1000mph, we'd have to center our gravitational pull and would be thrown outwards, but the size and gravitational pull towards our earth keeps our feet on the ground. Again, due to the size of the planet and the speed it rotates the sky doesn't reflect this neither do we get pulled off.

Hope this helped

FX