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If you have ever been on a merry-go-round or a carnival ride, you know that when you spin you get pulled outward—something known as centripetal force. Yet, the Earth is spinning too. It makes one full rotation of its massive body once every 24 hours. So why can’t we feel the earth moving and the effect on our body the same way we feel it when we are on a merry-go-round? For help answering this head-spinning question, we turn to our friends at sciencealert.com.
Right now, as you read this, the Earth is spinning you around very, very fast. How fast? Roughly 1525 feet per second. So why can’t we feel this incredible speed? It all has to to do with gravity.
German orrey—a model of the solar system—from 1870.
You, your friends, the buildings, cars and even the air around you is being held together by Earth’s gravitational pull. Since the Earth rotates at a near-constant speed—that is, it doesn’t speed up or slow down in any way noticeable to us—we simply spin with it and don’t feel a thing.
Our planet has been spinning for billions of years and will continue to spin for billions more. This is because nothing in space is stopping us. There is no gravity in space, and so you and Earth continue to spin around and around at a thousand miles per hour. If it were to stop, slow down or speed up, we would all feel it, and it would be devastating for anything on the surface.
Don’t worry. That won’t be happening anytime soon!
