Suppose you could Hurry the rotation of the earth so that day was only half of? What would happen? Well, for beginners we should make new watches that have only hours 1 to 6 for AM and PM. If you had tickets at 8 o’clock, you will no longer be lucky: 8 o’clock no longer exists.
But maybe a more German question is why physicists ask such nutmeg questions? It will never happen – just anymore, right? Well, here’s the deal. Thinking about anti -fact scenes gives us an understanding of how things work here actually. Besides, it’s fun! Do I need to say more? Okay, it may even help us build a workspace elevator.
Oh, you don’t know what a space elevator is? It is a science fiction cluster, a link from the Earth to an orbital space station in a geosynchronous orbit. Cable climbing car would ride up and down, as well as a regular elevator. Basically it’s a way to get out to space so easily and routinely as you ride an elevator to your office in the morning – there are no need to rockets.
Let’s start with some basic questions and build up to some more complicated physics.
What is a day?
You can’t get more basic than that. But the answer is not simple. If you said that day is 24 hours, you are right – and wrong. If you stand outside, the time when the sun is at its highest point in the sky is called local noon. If you stand there until the next local noon, the amount of passed time is defined as 24 hours. So time is 1/24 from the time between two local noons.
But wait! This is not the same as a complete revolution of the earth. If you measured the time of a complete revolution, you would find that it is no exactly 24 hours. The reason is that the earth does two things at once: it turns on its axis, which causes the sun to seem to move through the sky. But it also orbits the sun for one year, which means that complete rotation will not result in the sun in the same position in the sky.
There are actually two different types of days. The Solar Day is the one you think of, and it is the one described above. The other type is called a Sidereal day. This is a completely non-scale diagram that will help you understand the difference:
