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
Even if you thought of the Earth as stationary, the other stuff isn’t rotating around around us. Imagine a car stalled on the highway. Some stuff is heading away from it. Some stuff is heading toward it. Nothing could be perceiving as rotating or orbiting around it. It’s the same for our position in the universe.
Only motion in a straight line, with no acceleration, is relative. Rotation involves acceleration and so is *not* relative, but absolute. On earth we can tell that the earth is rotating on its axis by swinging a large pendulum, like they do in some museums, and see that the pendulum’s swing rotates over several hours. Gyro-compasses use the same principle.
So basically, it is more likely the planets movements follow the law of physics, than follow some illogical weirdness required to have the Earth as a fixed point with everything revolving around it. 🙂 Cool.
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