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

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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

1) You are moving with the air mass which is moving with the rotation of the earth.

2) By definition, hovering in a helicopter is very deliberately maneuvering the helicopter in reference to things on the ground to stay in one place in reference to them. The wind is pushing the helicopter which has to be counteracted to stay stationary. The earth is very slowly and imperceptibly moving, but the pilot is looking out his front, left and right window to keep everything stable and the same. Its less like hovering as you think of it and more like flying in formation with the ground. If the earth was moving so fast that you could see it shifting, a hovering aircraft would still appear stationary as they are very intentionally flying in a way to stay over the same piece of dirt.

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