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Earth's rotation axis moves with respect to the fixed stars (inertial space); the components of this motion are precession and nutation. It also moves with respect to Earth's crust; this is called polar motion. Precession is a rotation of Earth's rotation axis, caused primarily by external torques from the gravity of the Sun, Moon and other bodies.
The Sub-bureau for Rapid Service and Predictions of Earth Orientation Parameters of the IERS, located at the United States Naval Observatory, monitors the Earth's rotation. Part of its mission involves the determination of a time scale based on the current rate of the rotation of the Earth. Other services of IERS are at the Paris Observatory.
The Michelson–Gale–Pearson experiment (1925) is a modified version of the Michelson–Morley experiment and the Sagnac-Interferometer.It measured the Sagnac effect due to Earth's rotation, and thus tests the theories of special relativity and luminiferous ether along the rotating frame of Earth.
The pendulum was introduced in 1851 and was the first experiment to give simple, direct evidence of the Earth's rotation. Foucault followed up in 1852 with a gyroscope experiment to further demonstrate the Earth's rotation. Foucault pendulums today are popular displays in science museums and universities. [1]
Earth's surface is the boundary between the atmosphere, and the solid Earth and oceans. Defined in this way, it has an area of about 510 million km 2 (197 million sq mi). [12] Earth can be divided into two hemispheres: by latitude into the polar Northern and Southern hemispheres; or by longitude into the continental Eastern and Western hemispheres.
The Chandler wobble or Chandler variation of latitude is a small deviation in the Earth's axis of rotation relative to the solid earth, [1] which was discovered by and named after American astronomer Seth Carlo Chandler in 1891. It amounts to change of about 9 metres (30 ft) in the point at which the axis intersects the Earth's surface and has ...
Any motion of mass in or on Earth causes a slowdown or speedup of the rotation speed, or a change of rotation axis. Small motions produce changes too small to be measured, but movements of very large mass, like sea currents , tides , or those resulting from earthquakes , can produce discernible changes in the rotation and can change very ...
The slightly longer stellar period is measured as the Earth rotation angle (ERA), formerly the stellar angle. [4] An increase of 360° in the ERA is a full rotation of the Earth. A sidereal day on Earth is approximately 86164.0905 seconds (23 h 56 min 4.0905 s or 23.9344696 h).