Earth rotates on its slanting axis at an astonishing 1100 miles per hour. The and clouds move along with it and still we aren’t able to detect a single disturbance that might indicate that we are traveling at such a hair-raising speed all the time. So why can’t we able to sense this supersonic speed? Here is why:
Detecting movement and being aware of movement requires that we see something from a fixed point that theoretically doesn’t move while we are at it. From here, we can see the moving body with our eyes and feel the movement. For example, when we are on a bike and the world seems zooming past us very near us which gives us the feeling of movement. The bike, in this case, is stationary for us, but the world is moving around it. But, in the case of airplanes when we are moving at such high speeds at a particular height, the Earth seems to become stationary and only when we concentrate on individual objects on the ground very hard, we realize that we are moving.
When we are on Earth, everything around us is moving at exactly the same speed like us in the rotation so all visible Earth, in this case, is our frame of reference which is perceived to be stationary along with all the atmosphere. The only thing we can see to be conscious of our movement is the sky. The Sun, the moon, and the stars provide a true realization of our movement, but we still can’t feel a thing because of the slow angular motion of our planet with respect to them. If we could see them at this rate, now that would feel our movement:
But we can’t feel it because this whole process takes an entire night to complete. The stars too seem stationary, and so does the moon. Due to all these factors, we can’t appreciate the enormous speed with which the Earth moves around its axis.
