If I fly straight up in a helicopter and hover there, why doesn’t the earth continue to spin underneath me?

803 viewsOtherPlanetary Science

Why doesn’t it spin independently of me and I end up in another country or something? And if a spaceship watched earth from afar, at one point would it start spinning with earth and at what point can it observe the rotations of earth without being part of it?

In: Planetary Science

23 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The real answer is the helicopter isn’t stationary. It’s moving with the momentum transfered to it by the Earth’s rotation from when it was sitting idle on the ground before take off. It’s the same reason you don’t fly into a building at 16,000 KPH when you jump strait up

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