Because the earth revolves around itself

Between the north and south poles is an imaginary line that we call the axis of rotation. This axis points to a bright star, the North Star, which is visible from the Northern Hemisphere on clear nights.

Therefore, as you know, every 24 hours the earth makes a complete revolution around itself, from west to east, and this is why the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and also why the stars are seen at night as if they were moving in the sky.

But to understand why this happens, let’s see what we can learn from the rest of the celestial bodies.

Everything spins

And The sun also turns. In fact, it rotates in the same direction as Earth. Not only that, but the Earth revolves around the sun in the same direction, as do all the other planets, in addition to more than a million asteroids and dwarf planets.

Most objects also rotate in the same direction. Jupiter and Saturn both rotate much faster than Earth, and it only takes about ten hours to complete one orbit around them. The rotation of Saturn is slightly inclined, so over time we see the image of its rings changing slightly.

But there are two special exceptions: Uranus appears to be tilted slightly to the side, and no one knows exactly how that happened. Maybe it once collided with another planet.

And Venus is a somewhat special case, as it rotates backwards. We don’t know for sure if it formed this way at first or if something happened to it at some point in time, but most scientists today believe that its rotation has reversed over time due to tidal forces associated with the dense atmospheres of the Sun and Venus.

All of this makes astronomers wonder if something caused all the planets to rotate this way, in this direction, in the first place.

A star is born

For more clues and explanations, It is enough to see what happens in the case of the “infant” star.

One of the best known is Beta Pictoris, which is surrounded by a thin disk of dust and gas and tiny pieces called planetoids that range in size from a grain of sand to a rock, perhaps even the size of a mountain. Astronomers are pretty sure that the disk was formed from material left over when the star was born.

Each star is born from a cloud of gas and dust that moves through space surrounded by other similar clouds. The force of gravity causes these clouds to pull together as they go, causing them to slowly rotate.

Even when one of these clouds collapses to form a star, it continues to spin. The star forms and rotates inside a center called a “flat pancake” of rotating gas and dust protoplanetary disk. All of them – the star, gas, dust – rotate in the same direction.

Astronomers believe that our solar system in its early years looked a lot like Beta Pictoris.

They also believe that within the disk, gas and dust can stick together in a process called turbulence “Accumulation”. As the newborn planet begins to grow, it becomes heavier and its gravity attracts more and more small pieces.

When that planet becomes massive enough, the force of gravity begins to crush it, making it denser. Because of this, the planet begins to rotate faster. An increase in pressure in the core causes the core to melt. Dense material sinks toward the core and lighter material floats toward the planet’s surface. So we ended up with a planet with an iron core surrounded by rocks, and probably on parts of its surface there are materials like water and ice. This is what we see happening in our solar system.

What if the earth did not rotate?

Earth’s rotation is important to life. Without it we wouldn’t have day and night – obviously – not even the ocean’s tides. And without the daily tides of water, It is entirely possible that life did not emerge from the sea and make it onto land.

Therefore, astronomers believe that the Earth rotates because our entire solar system was already rotating when it formed. However, many questions remain about how the rotation of the planets has changed over time and how the rotation affects the evolution of life.

With more than 5,000 planets now known outside our solar system, future scientists will have plenty of material to study and investigate.