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

Yes; (assuming you can stay in one spot and not drift or be pushed by any force) but you would need to wait a long time

Vantage points matter a lot; watching the earth rotate underneath you from 1000ft will look/feel different from watching earth rotate from 50 miles up

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