| Have you always believed Earth makes one full
revolution in 24 hours? I thought so too. As shown in the
graphic below, Earth is depicted as the white circles in
two points of it's orbit, A and B. In the A circle a
straight line from the Sun continues on through Earth. As
Earth moves forward one day to point B, notice the line
through Earth does not match the line from the Sun. At
this point Earth has rotated a full 360 degrees but at
the same time it has moved forward in relation to it's
angle to the Sun. This has taken 23 hours and 56 minutes.
The Earth must rotate on it's axis for another four
minutes to bring the same point of Line B into line with
the Sun. The graphic is for illustrative purposes only
and is not drawn to scale. |
