Moving fast while standing still...
Our planet is always spinning on its axis, and it takes a day to fully rotate.
So unless you're standing on the north or south pole, (where you'd slowly be spinning on the spot), you're always moving with the earth's rotation...
So why can't you feel the earth spinning?
Speed is relative.
Everything around you is moving at the same speed as you. This is like when you're in a car going at 80 km/h, but everything inside the car looks still.
Your inner ear can only really detect changes in motion - like when you speed up, slow down or change direction. As our planet doesn't do any of that, we can't feel it!
But how fast are you really moving?
It all depends on how far you're standing from the poles, which is where everything rotates around it. The further away from that axis of spinning you are, the further your bit of ground has to travel to make it back to the same spot. See what I mean for yourself by spinning a tennis ball between your finger and thumb.
The fastest you can spin with a planet like ours is at the equator. There, you travel 40,000 km a day to get back to where you started, which means you're travelling at a blistering 1,666 km/h.
I'm based in the UK, quite far away from the equator. But even where I'm sitting right now, I'm still travelling about ~1,000 km/h. An airbus A380 has a cruising speed of ~900 km/h. So even this far north, I'm still going faster than a jet plane...
SOURCES:
I'm Eliza, and I'm a scientist and illustrator who loves making the invisible, completely mad bits of science feel like an adventure, especially for kids who feel like science isn't for them.
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