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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.
Ignoring the influence of other Solar System bodies, Earth's orbit, also called Earth's revolution, is an ellipse with the Earth–Sun barycenter as one focus with a current eccentricity of 0.0167. Since this value is close to zero, the center of the orbit is relatively close to the center of the Sun (relative to the size of the orbit).
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]
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 ...
where I s is the moment of inertia, ω s is the angular velocity of spin about the spin axis, m is the mass, g is the acceleration due to gravity, θ is the angle between the spin axis and the axis of precession and r is the distance between the center of mass and the pivot. The torque vector originates at the center of mass.
The Eötvös effect is the change in measured Earth's gravity caused by the change in centrifugal acceleration resulting from eastbound or westbound velocity.When moving eastbound, the object's angular velocity is increased (in addition to Earth's rotation), and thus the centrifugal force also increases, causing a perceived reduction in gravitational force.
The rotation rate of the Earth (Ω = 7.2921 × 10 −5 rad/s) can be calculated as 2π / T radians per second, where T is the rotation period of the Earth which is one sidereal day (23 h 56 min 4.1 s). [2] In the midlatitudes, the typical value for is about 10 −4 rad/s.
Earth-centered inertial (ECI) coordinate frames have their origins at the center of mass of Earth and are fixed with respect to the stars. [1] " I" in "ECI" stands for inertial (i.e. "not accelerating "), in contrast to the "Earth-centered – Earth-fixed" ( ECEF ) frames, which remains fixed with respect to Earth's surface in its rotation ...