The earth weighs 60 trillion tons, why can it be suspended in space, and what secrets does it hold inside?

Have you ever thought about this problem, the earth weighs 60 trillion gigatons, but such a "heavyweight" can be suspended in space without any support, and why is this?

Living on the earth, we take it for granted that everything on the earth is attached to the support point. Even if it is suspended in the air, it is realized by a unique principle. However, in the universe, all the planets are suspended in the sky, including the earth.

Generally speaking, using ourselves as a reference, the top of our head is above and our feet are below us. But this is a judgment made by ourselves. If we look at the earth as a whole, the earth is divided into the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere. Two people are in different hemispheres. At this time, the directions are completely opposite, and this phenomenon is affected by gravity. the result of. Gravity is downward, and things on earth are affected by gravity, so things on earth have a downward trend. For example, the apples on our apple tree will fall.

The earth is mainly composed of three parts: crust, mantle and core. The crust is the surface of the earth, where humans live and engage in their daily activities.

Its surface is composed of multiple groups of fractured, undulating blocks of different sizes. It can stretch up to thirty kilometers from under our feet, with granite layers above and basalt layers below. The mantle is the middle layer of the earth and is mainly composed of dense rock-forming materials. Further down the mantle is the earth's core. Many people think that the earth's core is mainly composed of iron and nickel, but this conclusion cannot be completely defined, because scientists have not yet had an accurate research result for this part. It is like It is the yolk part of the egg. With our current level of technology, we cannot explore the core of the earth. We can only speculate through some evidence, among which are seismic waves.

How to use seismic waves to detect the core of the earth? Seismic waves are divided into transverse waves and longitudinal waves. Transverse waves only exist in solids, but longitudinal waves can exist in solids and can also propagate in liquids. According to the research of scientists, at a distance of 3,000 kilometers from the surface, the seismic fluctuations have dropped significantly, and the transverse waves have disappeared, but the longitudinal waves still exist, which means that there is layering at this location.

We have a clear understanding of the internal structure of the earth, and then go back to our original doubt, why does the earth not sink? In fact, this question has been answered hundreds of years ago, because of gravity. All mass matter on the earth is affected by gravity, but the effect of gravity on the earth is not strong. We can see human beings "counterfeiting" gravity everywhere, such as helicopters, which use the rotation of the paddles on the propeller to achieve a state of gravitational equilibrium with the lift generated by this.

But the earth does not have a propeller, and what is it suspended in space through? In fact, the example of a helicopter is to express that the up and down direction of the earth is not determined by ourselves, but determined by the direction of gravity. But the earth is in the universe, and the environment in the universe is very different from the earth. How does the earth distinguish the upper and lower directions?

In the endless universe, it can be said that there is no direction at all. Assuming that there is only the earth in the entire space, and there is no reference object, it is difficult to judge the orientation. In the process of exploring the universe, astronauts are already in a state of complete weightlessness in the space capsule. They distinguish the direction by relying on an object as a reference in physics to distinguish up and down. At this level, the universe has a direction. Because the vast universe is not the only celestial body, the earth, there are thousands of them. Since they do not exist alone, they naturally have directions.

Earth is one of the eight planets in the solar system. It is about 149.6 million kilometers away from the sun. It is also the terrestrial planet with the largest diameter, mass and density in the solar system. The direction of the earth is determined by the sun as a reference. Of course, the Earth's choice of the sun as a reference is not just because the sun provides the Earth with light and heat. In addition to being the central celestial body of the solar system, the sun has its own strong gravitational pull. The strong gravitational force of the sun According to the law of universal gravitation, we can know that the greater the mass of the object, the greater the gravitational force it has. In the solar system, the sun accounts for 99.86% of the total mass of the solar system. It can be said that the sun is the absolute master of the entire solar system.

How to understand the process of "gravity" formation? Comparing the universe to the ocean, the water molecules in the ocean are compressed and launched by the seawater compressor. At this time, the seawater in the ocean will decrease, and the surrounding seawater will fill the vacancy. In this way, the "gravity" can be understood in a popular way. ". The sun binds all the celestial bodies in the solar system, including the earth, with its own powerful gravitational force. Of course, universal gravitation does not only refer to the gravitational force of the sun, but also requires a force to support the earth from falling into the solar system. With this force, the earth can hang in space without falling into the solar system.

So where does this power come from? In fact, we are very familiar with this force, which is the movement of the earth.

The earth moves every moment, rotates from west to east and revolves around the sun. The average linear speed of the earth's revolution is about 30 kilometers per second. The time when the earth rotates once is called the sidereal day, which is the time of our day, but it is not actually 24 hours, but about 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. The main reason for the four-minute gap is the superposition of the earth's rotation and revolution. However, we all know that the earth alternates day and night and moves constantly, but what is the force that drives the earth to keep moving?

This question had an answer as early as the seventeenth century, that is, the law of inertia discovered by the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei. Due to inertia, a moving object will continue to maintain its original direction and speed even if it is no longer affected by external forces. According to this principle, scientists speculate that the power of the earth's motion comes from the protoplanetary disk at the beginning of the formation of the earth. Chaos is the initial state of the particles in the original solar nebula. , Gradually, disorder turns into order, potential energy turns into kinetic energy, and finally turns. Therefore, the power of the earth's rotation mainly comes from two aspects, one is the rotation of the earth itself, and the other is the gravitational force of the sun. Interacting between the two, Earth maintains its own orbit, allowing it to levitate in space.