Humans, like all living beings, participate in the movement of the Earth, as our planet is constantly moving: it rotates around its axis and around the Sun, writes Focus.
Right now, you are flying through space with our planet at a tremendous speed. People are part of the movement of our planet both around the Sun and around its own axis. But we do not feel this motion. The Earth completes a full rotation around its axis every 24 hours at a speed of about 1670 km/h. Each year, our planet makes a complete orbit around the Sun at a speed of about 107,000 km/h. So why don't we feel such rapid movement of our planet? Space writes about this.
Remember how, as a child, you felt the motion of a carousel when you rode on it. Our brain noticed that movement because it was not smooth. The carousel accelerated and decelerated. But the motion of the Earth is smooth. The rotation of the planet around its axis and around the Sun occurs without sharp jolts or stops. As our planet orbits the Sun in a slightly elongated orbit, its speed increases slightly when the Earth is closer to the Sun and decreases slightly when it is farther away. But the changes in speed occur so gradually and smoothly that we do not feel them.
Imagine you are flying in an airplane at hundreds of kilometers per hour. But everything in the cabin remains still. The fact is that the airplane and its passengers are moving at the same speed and in the same direction. Just as we do not feel the speed of the airplane, we do not feel the motion of the Earth because we are moving with the planet at the same speed. Our brain could sense the motion of the Earth if the planet suddenly accelerated or decelerated, or changed its trajectory. But that does not happen.
People also do not notice the motion of the Earth because there are no reference points in space that would allow us to see the movement of the planet. When you drive a car, the passing trees and signs serve as reference points. These stationary objects help our brain register motion. But the stars in space are so far away from us that they appear stationary, even if we are moving relative to them at thousands of kilometers per hour.
Despite the enormous speed of the Earth's movement, we do not fly off into space thanks to Earth's gravity, which pulls everything on the surface of our planet toward the center of the Earth.
By the way, if the Earth did not rotate on its axis, one side of the planet would always face the Sun, where there would be eternal day. On the other side, there would be eternal night. And because the Earth's axis is tilted during its orbit around the Sun, this leads to the changing of the seasons on our planet. That is, different parts of the Earth receive more or less sunlight.
It is worth noting that the Sun is also not stationary, but rotates at hundreds of thousands of kilometers per hour around the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Our galaxy itself is also moving through the universe.
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