RE: Dear stupid: how many times does the earth rotate in a year?
June 20, 2016 at 10:31 pm
(This post was last modified: June 20, 2016 at 10:36 pm by bennyboy.)
(June 14, 2016 at 9:35 pm)Aractus Wrote: Very simple question. In the time it takes for the earth to make a complete revolution around the sun (1 year), how many times does the Earth physically rotate?
This thread is already pretty long, but I don't want to read it. If others have given the answer, fine, but I want to think for myself.
In Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne has a twist ending in which his hero has unknowingly gained a day because of the direction of his travel. If you think of the Earth as a traveler around the sun, then that means the Earth must either gain or lose one rotation compared to what we know the length of a year to be: about 365.2452 days.
Therefore, the answer should be 364.2425 or 366.2425 depending on whether the Earth's orbit and its spin are in the same direction or opposite. Since you didn't provide 364.2425 as an option, then I must assume you've already learned that the orbit and spin are in the same direction, and say the answer is 366.2425.
HOWEVER, the sun is orbiting around the center of our galaxy, and the galaxy perhaps is party of a supergalaxy with its own rotation, adding a Jules Verne effect (lol) to our calculations. I don't think the difference would be enough to change the value at only 3 decimal points. . . but it would change it. So getting an absolute value would, it seems to me, be impossible.
