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The geographic poles are defined by the points on the surface of Earth that are intersected by the axis of rotation. The pole shift hypothesis describes a change in location of these poles with respect to the underlying surface – a phenomenon distinct from the changes in axial orientation with respect to the plane of the ecliptic that are caused by precession and nutation, and is an ...
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 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 Copernican model makes the claim of describing the physical reality of the cosmos, something which the Ptolemaic model was no longer believed to be able to provide. Copernicus removed Earth from the center of the universe, set the heavenly bodies in rotation around the Sun, and introduced Earth's daily rotation on its axis. [9]
Polar motion of the Earth is the motion of the Earth's rotational axis relative to its crust. [2]: 1 This is measured with respect to a reference frame in which the solid Earth is fixed (a so-called Earth-centered, Earth-fixed or ECEF reference frame). This variation is a few meters on the surface of the Earth.
Precession means the Earth's nonuniform motion (see above) will affect different seasons. Winter, for instance, will be in a different section of the orbit. When the Earth's apsides (extremes of distance from the sun) are aligned with the equinoxes, the length of spring and summer combined will equal that of autumn and winter.
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 ...
The stars viewed from Earth are seen to proceed from east to west daily, due to the Earth's diurnal motion, and yearly, due to the Earth's revolution around the Sun. At the same time the stars can be observed to anticipate slightly such motion, at the rate of approximately 50 arc seconds per year, a phenomenon known as the "precession of the ...