Ok Grazie so the atmosphere is rotating with the earth the return flight would have double the wind resistance

Throwing a Frisbee east would travel twice as fast as if you threw it west.

The flight distance would not be altered if the atmos rotated anyway = distance is distance =fixed

Lol!

Great stuff.

G

Rory try this

Grazie

I suppose this is the "telling" para:" It's all a question of frame of reference. If your departure point or your arrival point is outside the Earth system, then the Earth's rotation is important; but when they are both on the Earth's surface and within its atmosphere, the rotation makes no difference.

G

> To do this, our atmosphere would need to be static, in relation to the Earth. It isn't. It revolves with the Earth....
Actually, not entirely revolving with the Earth .... where a lot of planes fly, up in the Jetstream, the journey can be faster one way; a good example is scheduled flights between Sydney and Perth, Australia (3293 Km); for the same aircraft, the journey time west is 4hr55min, and east is 4hr15min = 40min shorter!

durban posion?

loved it!

Ohhh that makes sense, if your head is spinning you wouldn’t notice. but a guy in space he would see that your head is spinning. Lol.

Again, CC, like many things in Life it is all a matter of degree and where the "observer" is located.

DP? - I know people still recovering, and that was 1968!

Grazie . . . . . . .

Oh - but Rory IS perfectly right.

Have been flying to the far East from Copenhagen many times - AND: the outbound flight (in the east direction) always takes about some 10 hours while the flight back takes some 11 hours... at least 1 hour in difference... So yes??

Or is it just my watch getting confused by some relativistic influences - I mean: the Earth's speed orbiting the Sun - and the Suns speed orbiting the black golfball in the middle of the Milky Way are quite substantial in such matters ...

Or ... ??

ritsmer please next time you travel west or east take note of the exact time, distance and take note of the daylight hours = sunset time.
And please send this info to me. I have the veg file and and it will take two seconds to set up to compare the results. The small difference in outbound inbound time is often put to wind resistance.

The thing is if I am wrong and I hope I am, I can claim a 36% discount on the inbound flight in the northern hemisphere and a 36% discount on the outbound flight in the southern hemisphere. The earth could be bouncing around like a beach ball for all I know…..but if I can save……!

Wow!!!! Great video, not to mention the subject.

For a moment there I thought I was logged onto "Scientific America"....

TomG

"The thing is if I am wrong and I hope I am"

You are very wrong.
As pointed out previously the difference in flight times travelling each way between the same points on the earth is due entirely to jet streams which travel at speeds not insignificant compared to the speed of an aircraft.
The reason you have to adjust your watch by different amounts is because relative to the Sun, a body external to the earth's frame of reference, there is a difference if you fly east>west or west>east.
That the earth is rotating is not entirely irrelevant to air travel. Much of the eart'hs weather including the jet streams is caused by the small drag between the atmosphere and the surface of the rotating earth. The Coriolis force also has an effect. The Inertial Navigation System used by aircraft also has to be compensated continuously for the earth's rotation and orbit around the sun.

If you want something to ponder then the construction and filling of The Three Gorges Dam in China has changed the length of our day.

If you have some idle time during renders there's several great channels on YT such as MinutePhysics and VSauce that will really mess with your head with facts.

Bob.

Bob what you are failing to explain is the 1670 kmp earth rotation plus 693 kmp speed of the jet is reduced to only 693 kmp when flying west because the wind blows stronger.

We are talking about distance = 18 000 km is 18 000 km no matter how hard the wind blows, if the wind blows gale force 18 000 km now magically is reduced to 3000 km.
When you travel east 1 + 1 = 2 but when you travel west 1 + 1 = 1 because the wind blew the other one away???

>>>>The reason you have to adjust your watch by different amounts is because relative to the Sun, a body external to the earth's frame of reference, there is a difference if you fly east>west or west>east.<<<<<

You don't have to adjust your watch because time is irrelevant, it doesn't exist. It's a completely human concept and the universe doesn't give a crap about it ( just like there is no left/right, up/down in space ). The only reason you have a watch in the first place and are adjusting it is because you want to socialize with other humans and time helps you with that.

Your body doesn't give a crap about time either, it knows it doesn't exist, it runs on its own schedule/cycle ( terminology not to be confused with the concept of time ). That is why you get jet lagged when you try to force it to adjust.

And that is why time travel is impossible. There is nowhere to go since time doesn't exist.

On the plane flight subject, I'd guess that a plane is still being influenced by earth's gravity and simply rotates with the earth. Faster flights west to east are simple to explain. Tail wind instead of head wind. Plane moves much faster.

... is due entirely to jet streams...

Yes, of course - but sometimes it is fun to let the thoughts wander a little outside the limitations of learned facts...

...like it is quite intriguing to fly east when approaching the south of the Himalayas and watching the Ground Speed go 100 Km/h or more over the speed of sound at that temperature - hoping that we will not bump into some stationary air... :- )

What Rory's illustration is showing is that IF the Earth is rotating then the trip back will be shorter timewise. When flying one way you are playing catch-up but the return trip should be muuuuch quicker because you're flying against rotation so making your trip shorter. Jet streams affect your time only 5 to 10% maybe. If Rory's illustration is correct then we are in a "geocentric" solar system.

Sure Earth is geocentric! and flat too!!

Great, next time I fly West I can save some gas.

Terrific video. Don't forget that the earth is also travelling with the Sun in a cork screw pattern with the rest of the planets in toe as we speed around the edge in a sinewave motion going above the galaxies event horizon and below as we churn along on our merry way at speeds that I can't quite comprehend. Add to all of this is Quantum physics now proving that we don't really exist and we are projected as an observer into this holographic projection.

Okay, I've got to go an lay down now.

One nit that struck me is that you're measuring the rotational speed at the equator, but your flight path is more than half way toward the pole.

When i make my NYC to Brussels trip, flying east takes about 6.3 hours while flying back west takes about 7.1 hours, the difference being entirely due to the jet stream. The flight isn't 7000 miles across the earth both ways; it's through about 6500 miles of air one way and 7500 miles of air the other, since the plane navigates and pushes through air, not ground. Consider that if you took the trip in a balloon, you'd get from Brussels back to NY much faster by going the rest of the way east around the earth, since you wouldn't have any propulsion to push you against the wind. (Note that "Around the World in 80 Days" goes east for this reason!)

However, according to the airport clocks' local time, the trip east takes about 12.3 hours and the trip back west only takes about 1.1 hours. That part freaks me out way more.

The whole thing is bunk though. As Grazie points out, the air does move with the earth. Event taking wind speed and the Coriolis effect into account, the air moves *with* the earth much, much more than it moves *across* the earth. At typical North America -- Europe crossing latitudes the earth's rotation is about 700 miles per hour while the wind speed relative to the earth is usually around 20 to 60. That means that the wind speed is only a few percent different than the ground speed.

Gee Kelly, that's a considerable saving, 11.2 hours quicker going east to west :O)

So, I guess all olympic races need to be run in the same direction so they don't cheat (I mean, in one direction they'll set incredible records - and in the other direction it'll take way longer).

It's all relative.