"And yet, it turns!" - this encyclopedic phrase uttered by the physicist and astronomer of the past Galileo Galilei, we have known since school time. But why does the Earth turn? In fact, this question is very often asked by their parents as young children, and adults themselves are not averse to comprehending the secrets of the Earth's rotation.
For the first time, an Italian scientist spoke in his scientific works that the Earth revolves on its axis at the beginning of the 16th century. But as to why the rotation occurs, there has always been a lot of controversy in the scientific community. One of the most widespread theories says that other processes played a major role in the rotation of the earth - those that took place in time immemorial, when the formation of planets was just beginning. Clouds of cosmic dust "knocked together", and thus the "embryos" of planets were formed. Then other cosmic bodies - large and smaller - were "attracted". It is precisely the collision with large celestial bodies, according to a number of scientists, that the constant rotation of the planets is due. And then, according to the theory, the planets continued to rotate by inertia. True, if we take this theory into account, many legitimate questions arise. Why are there six planets in the solar system, rotating in one direction, and one more - Venus in the opposite direction? Why does the planet Uranus rotate in such a way that the time of day does not change on this planet? Why can the rotation speed of the earth change (insignificantly, of course, but still)? Scientists have yet to answer all these questions. It is known that the Earth tends to slow down its rotation somewhat. Each century, the time for a complete revolution around the axis increases - approximately by 0, 0024 seconds. Scientists associate this with the influence of the Earth's satellite - the Moon. Well, about the planets of the solar system, we can say that the planet Venus is considered the "slowest" in rotation, and Uranus is the fastest.
