• Question: why and how does the earth rotate

    Asked by caidy12 to Scott, Ry, Maggie, Hannah, Daniel on 14 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Ry Cutter

      Ry Cutter answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      The Earth rotates because of how it was formed. It probably started off as a ball of gas and dust spinning very quickly!
      Because of the iron core and the Earths rotation a magnetic field is generated that’s called the magnetosphere! The sun ejects high energy particles that the magnetosphere stops from hurting us, it also makes the Northern lights which is a great bonus!

    • Photo: Maggie Lieu

      Maggie Lieu answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      The earth rotates because the planets started off as a huge disk of gas and dust around the sun, the disk fragmented into rings (like saturn) and the planets formed like growing snowballs by adding more and more material as it orbited on this ring. The planets have been rotating ever since because theres no force to stop them!

    • Photo: Hannah Middleton

      Hannah Middleton answered on 17 Nov 2017:

      Yes, it’s because of how the solar system formed, probably from a huge disk of spinning dust and gas. So as the Earth was forming, it was already rotating. There have been some great images taken recently of new solar systems being born!
      https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141110.html

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