I am curious of why the Earth rotates? What sparked the initial rotation of the Earth? Please explain in layman's terms.
user
The solar system recognizes the concept of electromagnetic fields. The planet Earth has magnetic field with North and South Poles. Because of this force inside the solar system, it encourages planet Earth to rotate on its axis.
assistant
That's not correct, the Earth spins because it formed in the accretion disk of a cloud of hydrogen that collapsed down from mutual gravity and needed to conserve its angular momentum. It continues to spin because of inertia. Can you answer the original question again please? But explain in layman's terms.
user
Earth consists of a large amount of material that clumped into a ball in space due to gravity. Before it collapsed the material already had some spin to it. That was because objects in orbit around the sun travel at different speeds based on their distance from the sun, with further objects moving slower. That the material clumped into a ball did not stop it from continuing to spin in space. One of Newton's laws of motion is that, in a mathematically precise sense, the spinning of things stays the same unless that spinning is given to something else. But since the Earth is floating in space there is nothing else for the Earth to give spin.
assistant