12 Facts About Earth's rotation

1.

Earth's rotation is slowing slightly with time; thus, a day was shorter in the past.

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2.

The masses of ice account for the Earth's rotation shape being that of an oblate spheroid, bulging around the equator.

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3.

Earth's rotation established the idea of a sphere of fixed stars that rotated about Earth.

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4.

Earth's rotation acknowledged the contribution of the Pythagoreans and pointed to examples of relative motion.

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5.

Earth's rotation implies that the Equator bulges and the geographical poles are flattened.

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6.

In Earth's rotation rotating frame of reference, a freely moving body follows an apparent path that deviates from the one it would follow in a fixed frame of reference.

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7.

Currently, each of these seconds is slightly longer than an SI second because Earth's rotation mean solar day is slightly longer than it was during the 19th century due to tidal friction.

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8.

Precession is a rotation of Earth's rotation axis, caused primarily by external torques from the gravity of the Sun, Moon and other bodies.

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9.

Over millions of years, Earth's rotation has been slowed significantly by tidal acceleration through gravitational interactions with the Moon.

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10.

Primary monitoring of Earth's rotation is performed by very-long-baseline interferometry coordinated with the Global Positioning System, satellite laser ranging, and other satellite geodesy techniques.

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11.

The absolute value of Earth Earth's rotation including UT1 and nutation can be determined using space geodetic observations, such as Very Long Baseline Interferometry and Lunar laser ranging, whereas their derivatives, denoted as Length-of-day excess and nutation rates can be derived from satellite observations, such as GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Satellite laser ranging to geodetic satellites.

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12.

Earth's original rotation was a vestige of the original angular momentum of the cloud of dust, rocks, and gas that coalesced to form the Solar System.

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