What caused the earth to start rotating?

Answer 1

Gravity caused the various bits of nearby matter to start falling towards the center of mass of the lump of floating matter.

As they started to approach each other, their kinetic energy increased, and they gained a velocity.

The energy had to go somewhere, it became transformed into rotational energy.

As the masses accreted into bigger and bigger, and finally one lump, the planet kept spinning, adding even more mass as it attracted other passing asteroid type lumps.


But what caused the inwards energy to be transformed into rotational energy?
Ah! that's another question! :-)

Answer 2

I must apologize for the harshness of my response to each of my fellow contributors, but, unfortunately, so far, they are all wrong.

There is nobody who can say what exactly caused the earth to start rotating, because there are so many possible factors involved.

I CAN, however, say that each and every time a meteor strikes the earth's surface, the spin of the earth is affected, even though it might be completely imperceptible by today's technology.

The larger the object to strike the earth, the greater the change in the earth's rotational velocity.

The greater the difference in velocity between the earth and the object to strike the earth, the greater the resultant change in the earth's rotational velocity.

The greater the angle of impact with the earth's surface, the greater the resultant change in the earth's rotational velocity.

The nearer the earth's equator the object strikes, the greater the resultant change in the earth's rotational velocity.

It is entirely possible that the earth at one point had no perceptible spin, like the planet mercury, until after being struck by non-earth objects enough to give it the speed that we have today, of one spin per sidereal day.

It is also entirely possible that at one point our rotation only took what we now might consider to be a matter of hours, like Jupiter.

It is also entirely possible that at one point the earth's spin was on the order of mere minutes, or seconds.

Answer 3

This is a very hard question to explain without a diagram, but my theory is when matter, under the force of gravity, folds in on it's self the small amount of matter that starts collecting does not rotate, but the larger the object then the more matter that is pulled towards it, most of it, if not all this matter will hit the mass off-centre causing a rotation due to the impact. I think this starts rotation, after this the pressure of gravity acting on the mass increases the speed of rotation,( like a figure skater doing a spin with their arms and legs outward but when they bring their arms and legs inward their speed increases), the potential energy of rotation will always be the same, the denser the mass the faster the rotation, the less dense the mass the slower the rotation, but the the mass always holds the same energy.

Answer 4

Easy! Fill your bathroom sink with water and then open the drain. Why does a vortex form? What direction it is spinning? Now, try that same experiment in a slab sink or other places and compare the results. Now, check out what direction does the storms and hurricanes rotate. Any similarity? Is that the same for northen and southern hemispheres on Earth? Now for the grand finale, what direction does the Earth rotate? What about the other planets? What about our Sun? What direction are we going around our galaxy? Do you see a pattern?

Answer 5

The actual cause of the earth to start rotating is that the earth needs sunlight in all places so it started rotating around the sun

Answer 6

Why is the Moon not spinning then? It has been hit by countless of meteorites and has a very low gravity. Is it the spinnning of a planet that gives it it's gravity?

Answer 7

A bunch of dinosaurs standing in a vertical line from north to south pole ate chili and jet propelled the earth into rotation by farting in unison. I know this isn't the correct answer, but it's just funnier to think about.

Answer 8

When the Big Bang Happened the energy or wind was released and the energy is still in the UNIVERSE and we spin because the energy is constnintly moving .

Answer 9

The earth was rotating when it was formed.

Answer 10

Newton's suggetions on gravity are only theories not proven facts. The cause has not yet been discovered