if all motion is relative, how do we know the Earth isn’t stationary with everything else in the Universe rotating around us, albeit in a right weird and in uniform way.

Question

if all motion is relative, how do we know the Earth isn’t stationary with everything else in the Universe rotating around us, albeit in a right weird and in uniform way.

In: Physics

Answer 1

You *can* indeed assume a reference frame where the Earth is stationary. However, the earth interacts with other celestial bodies (most importantly with the sun via gravity), and would thus immediately go into motion in that reference frame. So you cannot *maintain* the stationariness of the Earth in any reference frame.