Our Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a huge cloud of gas and dust started to collapse under its own gravity. What keeps the Earth spinning on its axis?Įarth spins because of the way it was formed. … That rotation just happened to be in a counter-clockwise direction. This is due to the initial conditions in the cloud of gas and dust from which our solar system formed. Do all planets spin counterclockwise?Īnswer: Most of the objects in our solar system including the Sun planets and asteroids all rotate counter-clockwise. … Therefore the Earth rotates in an anti-clockwise direction around the Sun.

Thus the surface of the earth at the equator moves at a speed of 460 meters per second–or roughly 1 000 miles per hour.ĭoes the earth rotate clockwise around the sun?Įxplanation: The Earth can rotate anti-clockwise and clockwise about its axis around the Sun depending on where it is viewed from (North or South Pole). The earth rotates once every 23 hours 56 minutes and 4.09053 seconds called the sidereal period and its circumference is roughly 40 075 kilometers. Which direction does Earth revolve around the Sun clockwise or counterclockwise?Ī: The planets of our solar system orbit the Sun in a counterclockwise direction (when viewed from above the Sun’s north pole) because of the way our solar system formed. As the Sun and the planets started to form from the material they too were spinning counter clockwise due to the conservation of angular momentum. The solar system was formed from a disc of material which started to rotate counter clockwise as we know it. Its rotation direction is prograde or west to east which appears counterclockwise when viewed from above the North Pole and it is common to all the planets in our solar system except Venus and Uranus according to NASA.

Which planet rotates clockwise