Science Forums 2

[paigetheoracle]

Originally Posted by modest

The conservation of angular momentum says that when something very large rotates very slowly and shrinks to a smaller size - it will rotate faster. Think of an ice skater with their arms swinging out wide - they turn slow. When they bring their arms in close to their body they rotate faster. That's conservation of angular momentum.

Same thing happens when heavenly bodies form. A very large nebula of gas and dust may spin very, very slowly; but when it collapses it will conserve its angular momentum causing it to rotate much faster by the time it becomes a star. The process is similar for galaxy and planet formation.

There's no constant force making these things rotate. When you start something rotating in space it will continue rotating by Newton's first law. So, the rotation you see now is what's left from the original rotation when these things formed.

~modest

That's very interesting - so are you saying that as something shrinks, it spins faster? If so, would water going down the plug hole be an equal analogy because I've noticed it seems to spin faster at the end, when it gets to gurgling stage. Is there some connection then, between Quantam Mechanics ''spin' and larger bodies 'spin' - could this be it and is there something in here about black holes and star collapse, through the shrinking process? (Old, big and slow/ young, small and fast). Could this relate to all forms of reality and all forms of life? (Beaurocracy and anarchy) or am I jumping the gun with a theory of everything outlook? (Blasphemy! Heresy!...no, just wrong according to the evidence we have at present). Sorry if this seems a bit 'Strange Claims' area but I'm a layman trying to make sense of existence, not an astophysicist