• Question: how does the earth move around?

    Asked by sneaky ninga tyler to Omur, Maddison, Jimi, Hayley, Chris on 11 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Chris Conselice

      Chris Conselice answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      The earth moves because it always has.

      There is a quantity of objects called momentum which is what we call conserved — i.e., it doesn’t go away. So if something is moving it will keep moving unless something stops it. We don’t see this on earth because stuff is always bumping into other things. Friction between say a table or the ground and a moving object slows it down.

      The earth is moving because the material it formed out of was moving and nothing has stopped it so it continues.

    • Photo: Jimi Wills

      Jimi Wills answered on 11 Mar 2016:

      The Earth has momentum… it’s already moving. It would only stop if there was something to stop it.

      If you drop a feather, it drifts to the ground very slowly. The air slows is down. But if you drop a feather in a vaccuum (a space with no air) then it falls the same speed as a brick… because there’s nothing to slow it down. It falls because of the graviational pull of the Earth.

      The Earth is falling towards the sun, but at the same time moving sideways so that it always stays the same distance away… that’s how orbit works. The sideways movement is not slowed down because space is a vacuum. Earth is like the feather.

    • Photo: Omur Tastan

      Omur Tastan answered on 13 Mar 2016:

      I guess everything in the universe is moving, they have always been that way. Earth is no exception. It rotates around itself and revolves around the Sun together with all the other planets and they don’t even touch each other. Pretty amazing huh!

    • Photo: Hayley Moulding

      Hayley Moulding answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      The earth moves round and round because when the Earth was created it started rotating and now it has to continue rotating! The Earth rotates on an axis. Like if you had an orange, and put a pencil straight through the centre, you could move that orange round the pencil. It is a bit different as the axis on earth is diagonal, and the Earth isn’t as tasty as an orange! The Earth moves around its own axis, then as a result of the gravitational attraction between Earth and the Sun is rotates around that too!

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