How does the earth keep spinning on its axis?

AI Thread Summary
The Earth continues to spin on its axis primarily because space has minimal drag, allowing it to retain the energy gained during its formation. While space is not completely empty, the drag it experiences is negligible, resulting in only a gradual slowdown of Earth's rotation. A significant factor in this deceleration is the gravitational influence of the moon, which affects Earth's rotation over time. Additionally, the Earth does lose some energy through infrared radiation, but this loss is minor compared to the overall stability of its spin. Overall, the combination of minimal drag and lunar gravitational effects accounts for the Earth's sustained rotation.
alias25
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how does the Earth keep spining on its axis?
is it because it still has the energy it gained when it was formed because it doesn't lose energy into space cause there's no particles out there, but then i was thinking does it loes any energy through IR radiation?
just curious.
 
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Your initial supposition is essentially correct; the Earth continues to spin because space has very little drag to slow it down. However, space is not exactly perfectly empty, so there is some drag. This drag contributes a tiny bit to the fact that the Earth is indeed slowing down very gradually. However, most of this deceleration is due to gravitational influence from the moon.
 
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