Space Elevators Could Totally Work—if Earth Days Were Much Shorter

Suppose you could Accelerate the rotation of the earth so that one day is only half as long? What would happen? Well, for beginners, we had to make new clocks that have only hours of 1 to 6 for AM and PM. If you had tickets for an 8 -hour concert, you would not be lucky: 8 hours no longer exists.

But perhaps a more relevant question is, why do physicists ask nuts like this? It will never happen – continue, right? Well, here is the business. Thinking about counterfeiting scenarios gives us an overview of how things work here actually. In addition, it’s fun! Should I say more? OK, it could even help us build an elevator of workspace.

Oh, don’t you know what a space elevator is? It is an essential science fiction, an earth attachment to a spatial station in orbit in geosynchronous orbit. A cable scam was climbed from top to bottom, just like an ordinary elevator. Basically, it is a way to go out in space as easily and regularly as you go up in an elevator to your office in the morning – no rocket required.

Let’s start with a few basic questions and build more complicated physics.

What is a day?

You cannot become more basic than that. But the answer is not easy. If you said that one day was 24 hours, you are right – and badly. If you stand outside, the time the sun is at its highest point in the sky is called the local section. If you stand there until the next local noon, the amount of time has elapsed is defined as 24 hours. Thus, an hour is from the 1/24th of time between two local Mids.

But wait! It is not the same as a complete revolution of the earth. If you have measured the time of a complete revolution, you will see that it is not Exactly 24 hours. The reason is that the earth does two things at the same time: it turns on its axis, which means that the sun seems to move in the sky. But it is also in orbit around the sun during a year, which means that a complete rotation will not make the sun in the same position in the sky.

There are actually two different types of days. THE solar day is the one you think of, and it is the one described above. The other type is called a sidereal day. Here is a totally on -scale diagram that will help you understand the difference: