Abstract
The circulation of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans would be very simple, and straightforward if it were not for the planet’s shape and rotation. That revolutionary idea that the Earth was essentially a rotating sphere did not appear until the sixteenth century CE. Earlier ideas had been that the Earth was flat surrounded by a dome or spheres that held the Sun, Moon, the known planets, and stars. Later it was more generally recognized that the Earth was a globe, surrounded by those spheres. The origins of many of these ideas are lost in the depths of time, but here are some of the highlights.
Yet if anyone believes that the Earth rotates, surely he will hold that its motion is natural, not violent.
Nicolaus Copernicus
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hay, W.W. (2021). The Earth is a Sphere and Rotates. In: Experimenting on a Small Planet. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76339-8_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76339-8_24
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-76338-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-76339-8
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)