• Question: why does the earth spin

    Asked by to Juan, Joe, Kate, Rory, Rosie on 18 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Rosie Coates

      Rosie Coates answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      The earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a giant cloud of dust, known as a nebula, started to collapse. This collapse caused the cloud of dust to start rotating and as the dust collected together in smaller, tighter, more dense clouds and the planets started to form these smaller clouds started to rotate even faster.

      The earth has kept on spinning because there are no other forces that can slow it down. The only thing that possibly could are the tidal force of the moon but these are too weak.

      The spinning of the earth is very important though. Without it we wouldn’t have night and day. One half of the planet would always be in darkness so plants could not grow and so many other animals would also struggle to survive.

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