Does Earth's Rotation and Revolution Affect Time and Speed?

  • Context: Undergrad 
  • Thread starter Thread starter pokk
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Earth Relation
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
5 replies · 3K views
pokk
Messages
14
Reaction score
0
earth rotates around sun @ R speed, Earth spins on its axis @ S speed. Both R & S are counterclockwise. On the equator @ noon my speed is R-S whereas at midnite its R+S. Q= does this affect the time speed thing?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
pokk said:
earth rotates around sun @ R speed, Earth spins on its axis @ S speed. Both R & S are counterclockwise. On the equator @ noon my speed is R-S whereas at midnite its R+S. Q= does this affect the time speed thing?
So your speeds are R+ S vs R- S relative to the sun. So this would affect your "time speed" as observed by someone on the sun. There would be several problems with setting up such an experiment!
 
Because the surface of the Earth is continually accelerating, as you pointed out, noon and midnite approximate two different inertial frames, but in each one, if you measure the round-trip speed of light, you will get the same value.

Prior to this fact becoming known, this is essentially what the famous Michelson-Morley experiment (MMX) was trying to take advantage of, assuming that the speed difference relative to the sun (or the stars or whatever) would be detectable. But note that the speed difference you are talking about has a direction to it, the North-South component of the speed would be the same at noon and at midnite whereas the East-West component would be different. It would have been extremely difficult to make a precise enough measurement of the East-West component of the speed of light at noon and compare that to the same measurement at midnite, twelve hours later. So instead of doing that, they compared the East-West measurement with the North-South measurement, looking only for a difference in the two. But they could never detect any difference, no matter when they did the measurement, at anytime during the day or night nor at anytime during the year. The North-South component always matched the East-West component, as well as all other directions in between.

So this was the first experimental evidence that the answer to your question is "no".
 
ghwellsjr said:
Because the surface of the Earth is continually accelerating, as you pointed out, noon and midnite approximate two different inertial frames, but in each one, if you measure the round-trip speed of light, you will get the same value.

Prior to this fact becoming known, this is essentially what the famous Michelson-Morley experiment (MMX) was trying to take advantage of, assuming that the speed difference relative to the sun (or the stars or whatever) would be detectable. But note that the speed difference you are talking about has a direction to it, the North-South component of the speed would be the same at noon and at midnite whereas the East-West component would be different. It would have been extremely difficult to make a precise enough measurement of the East-West component of the speed of light at noon and compare that to the same measurement at midnite, twelve hours later. So instead of doing that, they compared the East-West measurement with the North-South measurement, looking only for a difference in the two. But they could never detect any difference, no matter when they did the measurement, at anytime during the day or night nor at anytime during the year. The North-South component always matched the East-West component, as well as all other directions in between.

So this was the first experimental evidence that the answer to your question is "no".
thanx & even though i don't understand u i believe u so I'm contemplating your post...thanx
 
The more objects and differences in velocities you add to the expample the more different frame of references there could be to observe you measure time differently.
 
thanx, i get it,thanx, all posts worked