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If you consider the North Pole to be the top of the Earth, then the Earth rotates counter clockwise, and so does the Sun, and the Earth orbits the Sun ccw also.

If you consider the North Pole to be the top of the Earth, then the Earth rotates counter clockwise, and so does the Sun, and the Earth orbits the Sun ccw also. This is true for most of the other planets also and they orbit in the same plane. And this is true for most stars in the galaxy and the rotation of the galaxy itself too. So it's pretty much all counter-clockwise.

seanhunter 2y ago
And if you consider the South pole to be the top of the Earth then the Earth rotates clockwise and so does the sun and the eath orbits the sun clockwise also. It's pretty much all an arbitrary convention and depends on your frame of reference. If you define North to be "the pole that if it's on the top then things rotate counterclockwise" and that's consistent then that's equivalent to the definition of an orientable Euclidian space I think, and I'm glad that's the case for our universe because things would be mighty weird if it weren't. You could shift your breakfast around the table and it would come back as a mirror image of itself. Joking aside as I understand it any orientable 3-d space admits two orientations, which are defined by the choice of the surface normal n. If you do it the way I said in a sibling post with the right-hand rule then n is pointing paralel to the axis of the Earth with positive in the direction of the North pole, the rotation is counterclockwise from that perspective and everything is groovy. But we could equally use our left hand, our thumb would point South and the rotation of the Earth would be clockwise. In that case we are choosing to orient using the other possible surface normal (-n).
- olddustytrail 2y ago
  If you take the South Pole as the top, then the Earth rotates clockwise, which is the SAME (this is the important bit) as the Sun, which is the SAME as the solar system, which is the SAME as the Galaxy. They're (nearly) all clockwise.
  - Etherlord87 2y ago
    The Sun and most planets and in general stuff rotates in the same direction because it formed from a cloud that had some movement, caused by a bifurcation at some point of its formation. Bifurcation meaning losing balance in chaos and moving away from that initial unstable equilibrium into a significant motion. So it shouldn't be surprising stuff is for the most part moving in the same direction. It's surprising when something isn't, probably because it was hit by some body changing its angular velocity. The same goes for the alignment of equators.

seanhunter 2y ago

And if you consider the South pole to be the top of the Earth then the Earth rotates clockwise and so does the sun and the eath orbits the sun clockwise also. It's pretty much all an arbitrary convention and depends on your frame of reference. If you define North to be "the pole that if it's on the top then things rotate counterclockwise" and that's consistent then that's equivalent to the definition of an orientable Euclidian space I think, and I'm glad that's the case for our universe because things would be mighty weird if it weren't. You could shift your breakfast around the table and it would come back as a mirror image of itself. Joking aside as I understand it any orientable 3-d space admits two orientations, which are defined by the choice of the surface normal n. If you do it the way I said in a sibling post with the right-hand rule then n is pointing paralel to the axis of the Earth with positive in the direction of the North pole, the rotation is counterclockwise from that perspective and everything is groovy. But we could equally use our left hand, our thumb would point South and the rotation of the Earth would be clockwise. In that case we are choosing to orient using the other possible surface normal (-n).

olddustytrail 2y ago
If you take the South Pole as the top, then the Earth rotates clockwise, which is the SAME (this is the important bit) as the Sun, which is the SAME as the solar system, which is the SAME as the Galaxy. They're (nearly) all clockwise.
- Etherlord87 2y ago
  The Sun and most planets and in general stuff rotates in the same direction because it formed from a cloud that had some movement, caused by a bifurcation at some point of its formation. Bifurcation meaning losing balance in chaos and moving away from that initial unstable equilibrium into a significant motion. So it shouldn't be surprising stuff is for the most part moving in the same direction. It's surprising when something isn't, probably because it was hit by some body changing its angular velocity. The same goes for the alignment of equators.