How fast you need to move to keep in a circular orbit around another body is dictated by how far the two bodies are separated from each other. Planets closer to the Sun are orbiting faster than Earth, with Mercury traveling 1.6 times faster than Earth at 105,000mph(47.4km/s). At the ...
(Imagine a basketball spinning on your finger. A random point on the ball's equator has farther to go in a single spin as a point near your finger. Thus, the point on the equator is moving faster.) 5. The planet moves around the sun (Image credit: Getty Images) The Earth isn't ...
Like the planet itself, Earth's core is constantly spinning – some scientists think it's moving even faster than the rest of the planet. The friction converts kinetic energy into electrical and magnetic energy that forms the field, which deflects harmful, charged particles emanating from the ...
But by deriving a model for the radial viscosity profile of the Earth that fits both postglacial decay times and free-air gravity anomalies associated with mantle convection, Mitrovica and Forte (1997) found that GIA should cause a secular trend in the LOD amounting to −0.5 ms/cy, a ...
For groundwater, our approach is based on preventing declines in local aquifer levels by setting the maximum safe average annual drawdown equal to the average annual recharge (Supplementary Methods). We estimated the annual groundwater recharge and drawdown for all land surface areas using Gravity Re...
The clock on the equator is moving faster than the one on the pole, so you might expect it to tick slower. However, it has a weaker gravitational potential, so you might expect it to tick faster. It turns out, the effects cancel for non-coincidental reasons and there is no latitude-de...
gravity is trying to level out the slope by moving water back down the slope. In equilibrium, these two forces will balance each other, so there will not be a net flow across the channel; the cross-channel flow is in geostrophic balance. At low water, in panel B, the current is flowi...
The new USC study provides unambiguous evidence that the inner core began to decrease its speed around 2010, moving slower than the Earth's surface. The inner core is considered to be reversing and backtracking relative to the planet's surface due to moving slightly slower instead of faster tha...
Subduction zones have recurrently formed on Earth. Previous studies have, however, suggested that they are unlikely to start in the interior of a pristine ocean. Instead, they seem to be more likely to form from another pre-existing subduction zone. One
Their gravity is not either sufficient to retain an atmosphere, so that they are not protected from the impacts of solar wind particles and solid bodies. The low surface gravity enables the ejected debris to escape. The impacts of dust particles then lead to ejecta production. The small solar...