Why people can't feel the Earth spinning: scientific explanation
The Earth moves around the Sun at a speed of 107,826 thousand kilometers per hour and makes a complete revolution once every 24 hours. Humans do not feel the planet's rotation for two reasons: smoothness and gravity.
This explanation was given by Stephanie Deppe, an astronomer and content strategist at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, Live Science reports. She noted that our planet's atmosphere is moving as fast as we are, meaning that it is stationary relative to us. The expert explained this phenomenon using the example of a car.
"If you are in a car and driving at a constant speed on the highway, you will feel immobility if you close your eyes and turn off the road noise. If this car was constantly braking, you would know it was moving. But because it's traveling at a constant speed, you feel motionless," Deppe said.
Another reason why we don't feel the Earth's rotation is gravity.
"The force of gravity that holds us to the Earth is much, much, much stronger than the force that would throw us outward," Greg Gbur, a professor of physics and optics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, said.
According to him, the acceleration of gravity on the Earth's surface is about 9.8 m/s^2, and its decrease due to the Earth's rotation at the equator, where everything moves fastest, is about 0.03 m/s^2.
"This is very small compared to what we feel from gravity itself, so we don't notice it," Gbur says.
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