What makes the earth rotate?

Question: What makes the earth rotate?

Asked by khughes08 to Hermine, Katy, Laura, Nathalie, Paula on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
- Paula Salgado answered on 14 Jun 2010:
  
  I presume you mean what makes the Earth rotate on its axis…
  
  Putting it simply, it’s a result of how the solar system and its planets were formed. It all started with a vast cloud of interstellar gas that was rotating. As Galileo and Newton showed, the rotational energy is conserved so as dust and grains aggregated to form ever larger fragments, the spin was maintained.
  
  As those fragments grew and grew to eventually end up forming all planets in the solar system, the rotation was conserved, so the sun and all planets ‘inherited’ their spin from the orbits of the particles in that initial cloud.
- Nathalie Pettorelli answered on 14 Jun 2010:
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_rotation
  
  Wikipedia is such a great tool… 🙂
- Katy Mee answered on 15 Jun 2010:
  
  God spinning it on the end of his finger like a basketball….
  
  (or her finger)
- Hermine Schnetler answered on 15 Jun 2010:
  
  This can be related to the big bang when the world was created. See when the big bang went BANG!!!! In the early years of the solar systems creation disc clouds of gas and dust would begin to condense to form planets. As they did this due to the explotion that thrown them out they would be rotating as they condensed the particles would continue to rotate even once the planet, its core and land masses were created. And will continue to do so.
- Laura Dixon answered on 16 Jun 2010:
  
  The earth rotates due to leftover force from when our galaxy and sun formed and from when particles joined together to form the earth. It follows the law that ‘objects at motion will stay in motion’ as there isn’t sufficent force to stop the rotation. Or at least that’s my basic understanding of the principle! 🙂

Question: What makes the earth rotate?

Comments