Why Does Everything In The Universe Spin?

The Earth and the Milky Way are constantly rotating, but why?

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How Fast Does the Earth Rotate?
“The ground feels firm and solid beneath your feet. Of course, the Earth is rotating, turning once on its axis every day. Fortunately gravity keeps you firmly attached to the planet, and because of momentum, you don’t feel the movement – the same way you don’t feel the speed of a car going down the highway. But how fast does the Earth rotate?”

Why does the Milky Way rotate?
“We live in a galaxy that is called the Milky Way. It's called a barred spiral galaxy, which means that it has a spiral shape with a bar of stars across its middle.”

Why and how do planets rotate?
“Stars and planets form in the collapse of huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust. The material in these clouds is in constant motion, and the clouds themselves are in motion, orbiting in the aggregate gravity of the galaxy.”

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[mullergyula]

This is a very good topic, but the question was not answered.

[samgilfellan]

Is that tv in the background ever used for anything else or it it just there to put a logo on.

[purplealice]

What I'd like to understand better is why this universal spin exists at every scale, from the smallest subatomic particles we've managed to detect, on up to galaxies and probably even the Universe itself. It seems to be as basic to the nature of matter as mass is.

[MrNisse-efby]

That still doesn't explain why the gas cloud started spinning in the first place...everything afterwards is spinning because the gas cloud was spinning...but what caused the cloud to spin? If it was spread out all around a new-born star, wouldn't it simply fall towards the star at whatever angle was easiest, and maintain _that_ angular momentum? Why would all the gas be moving in the same rotational direction?

[abah]

Does the universe orbit around something?

[Neeboopsh]

There must be a reference to say "counterclockwise". from our south pole it seems to appear the opposite in terms of clockwise or counter clockwise. to say north is the top, or what is being looked down at (good he pointed out that there is no up). its very nothern hemisphere to say its counter clockwise :)

[Stormfox]

Beware, I forsee "God made it" vs "the Big Bang did it" discussions coming

[jobo]

🎶 Just keep spinning, just keep spinning 🎶

[SYKRAL]

We were doing orbital physics in my sophomore physics class today. My teacher mentioned that this was the beginnings of rocket science. I asked him if we now had an excuse to get it wrong. He was not amused

[Grimfang]

Why is our galaxy (relative) flat? All the planets seem to be on the same horizontal vector. Is this something studied, or is it a simplification and our glaxy more like a ball?

[AGT]

you don't explain anything, how does the atoms spin? how does everything spin?

[moviemastersdk]

How do we know that everything is spinning counter-clockwise, our up could be down and our down could be up, might even be sideways?

[shaistaparveen]

Am i the only one who thinks that Universe is spinning in the same way we go around Qaba seven times.

[TheStigma]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it extremely arbitrary to say that the planets in our solar system rotate "counter clockwise"? I mean, if a planet in a system rotates counter-clockwise when viewed from "above" (another arbitrary designation) then looking at that same system from "below" would make it appear to rotate clockwise no?

[trevor-stanton]

We would call it clockwise if all our maps were upside down. They might as well be.

[ErusPhoebus]

law of conservation of momentum ^^ one of my favorite laws of physics

[danastoian]

Yes, the question would be: why it spins? it starts with particles attracting one another but why do they have to go around each other?

[whitefirepl]

That was excellent question! As for the answer, I'm sure there can be said a lot more :) If I understood correctly, the spin gains its momentum when there is a lot of mass, taking up a lot of space, and then this mass starts to collapse. I wonder if something vaguely similar can be said about particles. They also have a spin... of sorts...

[magic]

You spin me right round, baby
right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round

[terran]

400 Years Ago...

The Common Man: "WHY IS EVERYTHING SPINNING!?"
The Religious Man: "Because god."
The Common Man: "Okay."

100 Years Ago
The Common Man: "WHY IS EVERYTHING SPINNING!?"
The Enlightened Man: "I have looked out into the heavens themselves with my highly advanced (for this time period) telescope, made from a complex series of licences and have found that we are being tugged along a vertical line along an axis around our sun, which is in fact, not small, but thousands of times the size of our world, and being tugged along the center of our--"
The Religious Man: "Because god."
The Common Man: "Okay."

Now
The Common Man: "WHY IS EVERYTHING SPINNING!?"
The Enlightened Man: "Science."
The Religious Man: "Yeah it's pretty much science."
The Common Man: "Okay."

It's interesting where we came from, culturally, socially, and technologically.