Earth Rotation Theories

This time, Nick (and Olly) have come up with two completely contradictory theories to explain why the earth rotates.

This is actually a fairly plausible unexplained phenomenon, since current theories about the "Evolution of the Solar System" have huge gaping holes in them.

The most popularly distributed theory claims that, in the beginning, there was a huge cloud of swirling gas, dust, and other matter. A lot of the swirling cloud collected together in the centre, to form the sun, while the rest clumped together until the planets, moons, comets etc. were formed.

If this had happened, however, you would expect the planets to be basically similar, and all of the planets and moons to rotate and orbit in the same direction. Instead, you have:

• 5 small, rocky planets; 4 big gassy planets
• Venus, Uranus and Pluto spinning backwards
• Four planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) with moons orbiting around them in different directions
• Moons orbiting around planets on different planes
• The Sun is 98% hydrogen and helium; Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury are less than 1% hydrogen and helium.

Whenever anyone discovers a new moon, sends out a new probe, or takes a closer look at a planet, they always say it will "help us learn more about how the solar system evolved". This is because, really, they haven't got a clue how (or if) it evolved, and they desperately hope the new information will tell them anything other than "you've got it all wrong again".

So, basically, no-one has a clue how the earth started rotating.

So, this time, we have an actually decent phenomenon for Nick to explain, instead of the usual stuff about gravity, strange new species, shapes the universe could be, or random amendments to current theories.

Having said that, however, the explanations (both of them) are still as strange as ever.

Click here to go to the allegedly "remotely sane" explanation, about giant magnets, and here to go to the completely insane explanation, about a giant marmoset.