eli5: As earth rotates, why are we not able to travel to different places just by hovering above the ground? lol
In: Physics
Depending on where you are on the planet, the ground under your feet is moving at anything up to 1000mph.
What this means, of course, is that everything that’s on that bit of ground – including the building you’re in, and you yourself, are also moving at that speed. The air around you is also being dragged with the ground underneath it, so the atmosphere is spinning around at the same sort of speed – if it wasn’t dragged with the earth below it, you’d find yourself in a permanent 1000mph wind.
If I’m looking down at the earth from space, I’ll observe that, relative to me, the atmosphere is moving. For someone standing on the surface of the earth the atmosphere is still (still-ish – if we ignore wind)
What this means, then, is that when we say ‘hover’ we’re staying above the same bit of ground, but also in more-or-less the same bit of air. Moving away from our original bit of air/ground means that we need to actually move rather than just hovering in place.
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