.....

.....

186,000 miles/second.  It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

This bugs me.

I went along in life being told about planets and stars and all things about space, as we all did and being a young age at the time, I had no reason to doubt it.
 After all, why would a kid doubt a professor in a white overall or a teacher that has been taught to teach you the very same things he/she was taught.

I don't discount everything I've been taught but at the same time I'm becoming extremely sceptical each day from what I have been taught over time and one of them is stars and light years.

As we all know...stars are supposedly calculated in light years for distance as mileage would involve ridiculous maths.
So we are told that a star that is 600 light years away would take us 600 years travelling at the speed of light to reach it and also that we are looking at that star as it was 600 years ago as we see the 600 year old light.

I honestly cannot get my head around it and think it's absolute BS, yet my simple answer could be construed as kid like and discounted by scientists, coupled with ridicule, so here goes.

When we view a star, we are viewing that star as it is "now" not as it was X amount of years ago.

Why do I think this?

Think about going out on a night with a torch and a friend, then telling that friend to walk 100 yards, then turn on his torch to shine at you.

You are going to see the small light of that torch in his hand...not the beam from the torch to your face as the beam would be spread out the further it gets.

A torch spans out like a funnel and it would be like anyone looking into a funnel and seeing the light at the end because that's what takes your focus.

I could be way out in my thinking here and I don't profess to say it's 100% correct but it does seem more logical to me of us seeing stars as they are, not as they were, meaning stars are a hell of a lot closer than we are told.

What do you all think?

I'm not sure if understand very well what you are saying as English is not my main language, but everything you see is light that reaches your eyes. For you to see something, light has to travel from one point to your eye, So the small light of that torch in his hand you see has also traveled from there to your eye at the same speed that the beam did. The same happens when looking at distant planets, they don't project light, for you to see them it means that light has traveled from the sun, it has bounced on the planet and then reached to your eye, so if from the moment light reaches a planet and bounces, to the moment it reaches your eye a few minutes have passed, it means you are looking how that planet was a few minutes ago.

Look what we are told.

We are told that scientists have discovered a planet that can potentially support life which is supposedly 600 light years away.

Now how did they see this planet?
If you can only see a planet 600 light years away as it was 600 years ago, it means that all they are viewing is 600 year old light from it, so how can they see it.

This is where it gets bizarre and the reason they amaze us with the news and baffle the hell out of us with the physics behind it.

The light will not decay over the distance, as there is almost nothing in space to block it. That is why we can observe stars so precisely, as the light we see coming from the stars is almost exactly what the light it emitted was. This allows us to see the imperfections in the light characteristic of an exoplanet.

FOr example, if you had a glowing sphere similar to a star, and you held it up from across a field, a crappy digital camera could still distinguish it with enough clarity for you to tell what it was.

Quote from: cartwheelnurd on November 13, 2012, 12:33:50 PM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 13, 2012, 11:29:41 AM

Look what we are told.

We are told that scientists have discovered a planet that can potentially support life which is supposedly 600 light years away.

Now how did they see this planet?
If you can only see a planet 600 light years away as it was 600 years ago, it means that all they are viewing is 600 year old light from it, so how can they see it.

This is where it gets bizarre and the reason they amaze us with the news and baffle the hell out of us with the physics behind it.

The light will not decay over the distance, as there is almost nothing in space to block it. That is why we can observe stars so precisely, as the light we see coming from the stars is almost exactly what the light it emitted was. This allows us to see the imperfections in the light characteristic of an exoplanet.

FOr example, if you had a glowing sphere similar to a star, and you held it up from across a field, a crappy digital camera could still distinguish it with enough clarity for you to tell what it was.

Well I don't buy into the light year planets or stars.

I'm not saying that what you say is wrong, I'm just saying that I can't go along with stars being that far away.
I could accept them being something like a million miles away or something like that but not light years.

Is this because you are afraid of the realization that you are impossibly small and insignificant in a universe that makes you tiny and unnoticable? You don't have to dispel science, there is this thing called religion.

Quote from: markjo on November 13, 2012, 10:51:36 AM

186,000 miles/second.  It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

It's not the speed of light I have a problem with, it's the star distances.

I think stars are what they appear to be, small specks of light in the sky.

Quote from: hoppy on November 13, 2012, 01:02:41 PM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 13, 2012, 11:09:53 AM

Quote from: markjo on November 13, 2012, 10:51:36 AM

186,000 miles/second.  It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

It's not the speed of light I have a problem with, it's the star distances.

I think stars are what they appear to be, small specks of light in the sky.

When you say small, how small roughly as a wild guess.

I really don't know, a billion times bigger than the sun seems crazy. No where near as big as the sun seems more likely.

Quote from: markjo on November 13, 2012, 10:51:36 AM

186,000 miles/second.  It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

It's not the speed of light I have a problem with, it's the star distances.

Even if the stars are only 3100 or so miles away (further if they aren't right over your head), then it still takes 1/62 of a second or more for the star's light to travel that distance so you are still seeing them as they were a fraction of a second ago, not as they are right now.  This is how RE astronomers "look into the past".

Look what we are told.

We are told that scientists have discovered a planet that can potentially support life which is supposedly 600 light years away.

Now how did they see this planet?
If you can only see a planet 600 light years away as it was 600 years ago, it means that all they are viewing is 600 year old light from it, so how can they see it.

This is where it gets bizarre and the reason they amaze us with the news and baffle the hell out of us with the physics behind it.

I think you're reading too much into the discovery of Kepler-22b. All that NASA is claiming about this exoplanet is that it's within the habitable zone of its star, which is a little cooler and smaller than ours, and that it has a year that's not that different from our year. All that means is they haven't found any obvious things that rule out the possibility of life surviving there. It's like saying that you've confirmed a person could win the lottery tomorrow because you've confirmed that he's over 18 years old.

The light from the star being 600 years old is probably the least of one's worries regarding the viability of life on the planet.

Astronomers aren't just guessing the distance of stars. For relatively close stars parallax can be employed by looking at how much the stars move relative to how the earth has moved about the sun (of course this assumes that the earth actually rotates about the sun at a known radius, of which there's numerous evidence I won't get into). The parallax we can measure has increased tremendously since we've started observing the sky with satellites.

The other major method employed involves the star's apparent brightness. A star will get dimmer the farther away it is (because less of its light reaches us), so if you can determine what its natural light output is you can determine how far away it is. There are some good indicators of luminosity such as pulsation periods.

There are some more minor methods like looking at average independent motion throughout the sky. The key point is that when you can show that multiple methods produce similar results for a given star you've greatly increased confidence for each method.

I don't discourage you from questioning things and not accepting what you're taught at face value, but your response seems very emotional - that you reject something because it feels wrong and makes you uncomfortable for some reason. If you make a concerted effort to stick to empirical reasoning you may be amazed at how subjective your intuition can be. Phrases like "that seems crazy" aren't useful on their own, you should really make an effort to justify this factually.

Markjo, you are handling this thread very well.  I struggle with having that kind of patience. I think this is the equivalent of when FErs encounter n00b RErs who haven't read the FAQ.  Someone whose opinion is that stars aren't light years away and rockets wouldn't work in a vacuum (but insists comprehension of newtonian physics)... where to start?

I don't see why it is a problem () as you said if a star is 600 ly away than you are seeing the star from 600 years ago! The star may very well be different now but that us how it was 600 years ago! Same for the moon, we see the moon how it was about a second ago, and we see the sun how it was about 8 and a half minuets ago, it makes sence and is reproducible! How is it hard to understand?

Sceptimatic,

An easy analogy that helped me grasp this concept when I was a kid is watching a ball being kicked from across the field.  Have you ever witnessed this?  You see the foot and the ball make contact, the ball goes into the air and then you hear the 'thud' from the kick.  The thud took longer to travel to you than the light did so it appears to happen later.

When you hear thunder you think it just happened. But what you're actually hearing is lightning that struck a few seconds ago. (Unless you're lucky enough that it struck right near you)

Light is the fastest thing in nature; and perhaps nature's speed limit. (currently being challenged today by neutrinos)  The stars are so far away that there is no way to see them as they exist today.  We have to look at the light that left them years ago, however far away that might be.

Light is the fastest thing in nature; and perhaps nature's speed limit. (currently being challenged today by neutrinos)  The stars are so far away that there is no way to see them as they exist today.  We have to look at the light that left them years ago, however far away that might be.

I'd hate to derail this highly intellectual discussion, but neutrinos do not and cannot move faster than light. The reading at CERN was a mistake.

Quote from: FlatOrange on November 13, 2012, 01:50:57 PM

Sceptimatic,

An easy analogy that helped me grasp this concept when I was a kid is watching a ball being kicked from across the field.  Have you ever witnessed this?  You see the foot and the ball make contact, the ball goes into the air and then you hear the 'thud' from the kick.  The thud took longer to travel to you than the light did so it appears to happen later.

When you hear thunder you think it just happened. But what you're actually hearing is lightning that struck a few seconds ago. (Unless you're lucky enough that it struck right near you)

Light is the fastest thing in nature; and perhaps nature's speed limit. (currently being challenged today by neutrinos)  The stars are so far away that there is no way to see them as they exist today.  We have to look at the light that left them years ago, however far away that might be.

As I said earlier. I don't have an issue with the speed of light for most part.
My issue is with the stars actually (as we are told to believe) light years away by calculation.

I just don't believe the distances of the stars that we see.

On what grounds do you mistrust the information? The light leaves the star, moves for six hundred years, and then falls into your photo-receptors (eyes). The light that was ejected at that time is what you see, so you see something that was that way six hundred years previous. So why is that so hard to believe?

Quote from: ThinkingMan on November 14, 2012, 11:45:39 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 14, 2012, 11:29:36 AM

Quote from: FlatOrange on November 13, 2012, 01:50:57 PM

Sceptimatic,

An easy analogy that helped me grasp this concept when I was a kid is watching a ball being kicked from across the field.  Have you ever witnessed this?  You see the foot and the ball make contact, the ball goes into the air and then you hear the 'thud' from the kick.  The thud took longer to travel to you than the light did so it appears to happen later.

When you hear thunder you think it just happened. But what you're actually hearing is lightning that struck a few seconds ago. (Unless you're lucky enough that it struck right near you)

Light is the fastest thing in nature; and perhaps nature's speed limit. (currently being challenged today by neutrinos)  The stars are so far away that there is no way to see them as they exist today.  We have to look at the light that left them years ago, however far away that might be.

As I said earlier. I don't have an issue with the speed of light for most part.
My issue is with the stars actually (as we are told to believe) light years away by calculation.

I just don't believe the distances of the stars that we see.

On what grounds do you mistrust the information? The light leaves the star, moves for six hundred years, and then falls into your photo-receptors (eyes). The light that was ejected at that time is what you see, so you see something that was that way six hundred years previous. So why is that so hard to believe?

Because we have been spun so much BS over the years, that's why. Plus....We are told that stars are massive suns and make our own sun look like a dwarf.

We are told the Earth spins. Now this alone is enough for me to render all scientific space theories as BS or at the very least a shoehorned theory.

What BS are we spun? Why don't you think the Earth spins? You'll have to be a bit more specific or no discussion can really happen, which is, I assume, why you came here, to discuss.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/para.html

This is one of the bigger points that makes the whole "stars are all 3,100 miles away" theory silly in my opinion. Parallax has been used to measure objects 3 parsecs away. A parsec is i believe 3.2 ly.

Thinkingman:
I think just using our own common sense should tell us the Earth is stationary.

How so? Common sense combined with my little knowledge of astophysics and standard physics tells me that it makes perfect sense that the earth should spin.

Basic observation should be enough to determine that.

What observations exactly? My observations tell me that the earth spins, the sun is "stationary" in our reference frame, and the moon moves around the earth in about 28 days.

We do not feel any 1040 mph movement at all.

Try to think of the rpm rather than the speed. You wouldn't feel that. First off because your accustomed to it, and second of all because it's actually very slow. It's one rotation per day. You start to notice the coriolis effect on the human-sized scale at about 7 rotations per minute.

We see the moon, the sun and the stars all moving.

The appear to move, yes. All at different rates.

We are told that a solid Earth spins in exact unison with the atmosphere, whilst somehow we have another atmosphere within that, which is why the clouds move in different directions.

The clouds move because the air pushes them, and the air moves because of convection currents.

If you can explain to me how a massive atmosphere can be anchored to a solid Earth and it all spins together, I'd be interested to know.

Friction and gravity. Gravity holds it down to the surface, while friction causes it to move along with the rotation of the earth. There's nothing in space to cause friction for it to "slow down" if you will, so why shouldn't it move with the rotation of the earth?

Thinkingman:
I think just using our own common sense should tell us the Earth is stationary.
Basic observation should be enough to determine that.
We do not feel any 1040 mph movement at all.
We see the moon, the sun and the stars all moving.

We are told that a solid Earth spins in exact unison with the atmosphere, whilst somehow we have another atmosphere within that, which is why the clouds move in different directions.

If you can explain to me how a massive atmosphere can be anchored to a solid Earth and it all spins together, I'd be interested to know.

Here is an experiment: Go in a car, drive at about 60 mph. Now, when you begin to drive, you are pressed against the back of your seat, but then your body starts moving at the same speed as the car and you don't feel like the car is moving at all. You feel like it is stationary from your point of view. The earth spins, and you spin along with it. SO you don't feel any different. And in the grand scheme of the universe, 1000 kph isn't going to make much of a difference in the massive gravity of earth.

...1000 kph...

I can't... musn't.... I have too. To get kph derived from a speed in mph, multiply by ~1.6. That makes the speed 1,664 kph. I'm sorry, but you'll get torn open for things like this.

It's strange how we are told to believe we can whizz about at 1000mph and not feel anything at all.
The car analogy is pointless because you are inside a tin can going against the atmosphere.

I'd love to know how the atmosphere grips the Earth's surface and runs along with it as if it was a clutch plate to flywheel.

Exactly, that is the point, and on the earth you are inside the atmosphere, moving along with the whole earth against the vacuum of space, against nothing. You only feel movement when you are accelerating or when you are moving against something, the earth is neither.

Quote from: robertotrevor on November 15, 2012, 10:24:14 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 15, 2012, 09:57:57 AM

It's strange how we are told to believe we can whizz about at 1000mph and not feel anything at all.
The car analogy is pointless because you are inside a tin can going against the atmosphere.

I'd love to know how the atmosphere grips the Earth's surface and runs along with it as if it was a clutch plate to flywheel.

Exactly, that is the point, and on the earth you are inside the atmosphere, moving along with the whole earth against the vacuum of space, against nothing. You only feel movement when you are accelerating or when you are moving against something, the earth is neither.

Forget about the vacuum for a moment.
Can you explain to me why or how the atmosphere grips the Earth's surface and moves with it at 1000 mph.

I explained this about 5 posts ago or so. For this problem, we can't forget about the vacuum. It's an important factor. The earth has gravity, and therefore holds all of the gasses down to the surface. The earth is spinning, and it causes a friction force on the air, and the air moves with it because of this friction. Since there's nothing on the other side of the air to resist it via friction (the other side is space), then it keeps moving right along with the surface.

Quote from: robertotrevor on November 15, 2012, 10:24:14 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 15, 2012, 09:57:57 AM

It's strange how we are told to believe we can whizz about at 1000mph and not feel anything at all.
The car analogy is pointless because you are inside a tin can going against the atmosphere.

I'd love to know how the atmosphere grips the Earth's surface and runs along with it as if it was a clutch plate to flywheel.

Exactly, that is the point, and on the earth you are inside the atmosphere, moving along with the whole earth against the vacuum of space, against nothing. You only feel movement when you are accelerating or when you are moving against something, the earth is neither.

Forget about the vacuum for a moment.
Can you explain to me why or how the atmosphere grips the Earth's surface and moves with it at 1000 mph.

I guess it doesn't just, "floats away", because of gravity. And it is not affected by speed because it is also moving with the earth, because the earth is not accelerating it is moving in a constant speed (and in space you wouldn't feel any difference between constant speed and not moving, no matter how fast, because you are moving against nothing), and because it is moving on vacuum there is no friction that could make the atmosphere slow down.

"The only way to describe a spinning 1000mph Earth with a 1000mph atmosphere  that has slow moving clouds and winds inside it, is to go back to the car analogy which I dismissed but now have to use it to explain this (what I can only describe as fanciful) theory.

It's like being in a car, going 1000mph with all windows shut then turning on your air conditioner.

That's the only way I could see the Earth doing what scientists tell us.

It makes no sense at all."

In a car you need windows and windshield in order for wind to not hit you in the face. In space there is no wind, there is only vacuum, the earth is moving against nothing so it doesn't need a windshield to keep it's atmosphere from vanishing away. When you ride a bicycle you feel movement and your hair moves because of air resistance, if you were moving at the same speed on space (not accelerating, constant speed) you would not feel movement because you are not moving against anything. the same happens to the whole earth in space.

If that's the case, then why do we feel winds in all directions, plus clouds floating.
Do we have an atmosphere within an atmosphere?

Because this is the only way to explain this.

Sun light hits the earth with irregularities, I mean stronger in some places weaker in some places, where it hits stronger the air gets warmer, where it hits weaker the air is colder, warm air goes up in the atmosphere, colder air goes down, (of course not only up and down because the atmosphere is very thin but very wide) the movement of the air is called wind.

Quote from: ThinkingMan on November 15, 2012, 10:40:23 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 15, 2012, 10:28:39 AM

Quote from: robertotrevor on November 15, 2012, 10:24:14 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 15, 2012, 09:57:57 AM

It's strange how we are told to believe we can whizz about at 1000mph and not feel anything at all.
The car analogy is pointless because you are inside a tin can going against the atmosphere.

I'd love to know how the atmosphere grips the Earth's surface and runs along with it as if it was a clutch plate to flywheel.

Exactly, that is the point, and on the earth you are inside the atmosphere, moving along with the whole earth against the vacuum of space, against nothing. You only feel movement when you are accelerating or when you are moving against something, the earth is neither.

Forget about the vacuum for a moment.
Can you explain to me why or how the atmosphere grips the Earth's surface and moves with it at 1000 mph.

I explained this about 5 posts ago or so. For this problem, we can't forget about the vacuum. It's an important factor. The earth has gravity, and therefore holds all of the gasses down to the surface. The earth is spinning, and it causes a friction force on the air, and the air moves with it because of this friction. Since there's nothing on the other side of the air to resist it via friction (the other side is space), then it keeps moving right along with the surface.

If that's the case, then why do we feel winds in all directions, plus clouds floating.
Do we have an atmosphere within an atmosphere?

Because this is the only way to explain this.

I don't know what you mean by "an atmosphere within an atmosphere," but the reason for winds moving in different direction is only minimally due to the coriolis effect from the spin, but mostly due to convection currents in the atmosphere. I hope I don't have to explain a convection current to you. Floating clouds are from evaporating water moving up in the air and condensing together in lower pressure areas in the atmosphere. I would also hope that I wouldn't have to explain that either. I learned that when in 2nd grade I believe. I was... 7 years old maybe.

Roberto:
I know what wind is. That's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying that going by your logic, we have to have an atmosphere within an atmosphere...how is this?

I don't know how you reach that conclusion based on what i said, but the atmosphere does have several layers.

It doesn't matter how many layers it has.
We are led to believe that the atmosphere grips the Earth from the ground, up to the very edge of space and spins in unison with the Earth.

As thinkingman explained, friction of the air against the earth moving in circles also causes that air to move in circles in the same direction. As I explained already, gravity is what makes the atmosphere stay with the earth. All of the atmosphere and the earth don't necessarily spin (on earth axis) in "unison" with the earth, but it does move with the earth (again, because of gravity) around the sun.

Also wind (air) and clouds are part of the atmosphere.

Quote from: ThinkingMan on November 15, 2012, 11:05:07 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 15, 2012, 10:44:25 AM

Quote from: ThinkingMan on November 15, 2012, 10:40:23 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 15, 2012, 10:28:39 AM

Quote from: robertotrevor on November 15, 2012, 10:24:14 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 15, 2012, 09:57:57 AM

It's strange how we are told to believe we can whizz about at 1000mph and not feel anything at all.
The car analogy is pointless because you are inside a tin can going against the atmosphere.

I'd love to know how the atmosphere grips the Earth's surface and runs along with it as if it was a clutch plate to flywheel.

Exactly, that is the point, and on the earth you are inside the atmosphere, moving along with the whole earth against the vacuum of space, against nothing. You only feel movement when you are accelerating or when you are moving against something, the earth is neither.

Forget about the vacuum for a moment.
Can you explain to me why or how the atmosphere grips the Earth's surface and moves with it at 1000 mph.

I explained this about 5 posts ago or so. For this problem, we can't forget about the vacuum. It's an important factor. The earth has gravity, and therefore holds all of the gasses down to the surface. The earth is spinning, and it causes a friction force on the air, and the air moves with it because of this friction. Since there's nothing on the other side of the air to resist it via friction (the other side is space), then it keeps moving right along with the surface.

If that's the case, then why do we feel winds in all directions, plus clouds floating.
Do we have an atmosphere within an atmosphere?

Because this is the only way to explain this.

I don't know what you mean by "an atmosphere within an atmosphere," but the reason for winds moving in different direction is only minimally due to the coriolis effect from the spin, but mostly due to convection currents in the atmosphere. I hope I don't have to explain a convection current to you. Floating clouds are from evaporating water moving up in the air and condensing together in lower pressure areas in the atmosphere. I would also hope that I wouldn't have to explain that either. I learned that when in 2nd grade I believe. I was... 7 years old maybe.

You are totally missing my point.

I know we have the wind and clouds and how it works, so let's leave the wind out for a minute and concentrate on this other invisible magical atmosphere that grips the Earth and spins at supposedly 1000mph.

it's obviously not the wind that spins at this speed as we see it and feel it on our faces, so what other atmosphere is spinning at the same speed and why don't we feel it?

And you sir, are totally missing my point. Gravity holds the atmosphere to the earth while it spins, which causes friction at the surface and resulting friction at each layer of the atmosphere, causing it to move along with us. From our point of view, it's not moving at all (wind and weather aside). But from space's point of view, it is moving. Now, since this is nothing in space to cause friction to slow it down and make it not rotate with the earth, it keeps going with us. This is really, really basic physics.

Quote from: robertotrevor on November 15, 2012, 11:20:11 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 15, 2012, 11:13:46 AM

It doesn't matter how many layers it has.
We are led to believe that the atmosphere grips the Earth from the ground, up to the very edge of space and spins in unison with the Earth.

As thinkingman explained, friction of the air against the earth moving in circles also causes that air to move in circles in the same direction. As I explained already, gravity is what makes the atmosphere stay with the earth. All of the atmosphere and the earth don't necessarily spin (on earth axis) in "unison" with the earth, but it does move with the earth (again, because of gravity) around the sun.

Also wind (air) and clouds are part of the atmosphere.

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
How scientists managed to make people believe this, astounds me.

You just don't get it, is not about believe, it is about understanding, it makes logic sense, what is the part you don't understand?
Im not going to say mathematics is about believe just because I don't understand them.

Quote from: robertotrevor on November 15, 2012, 11:28:05 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 15, 2012, 11:24:05 AM

Quote from: robertotrevor on November 15, 2012, 11:20:11 AM

Quote from: sceptimatic on November 15, 2012, 11:13:46 AM

It doesn't matter how many layers it has.
We are led to believe that the atmosphere grips the Earth from the ground, up to the very edge of space and spins in unison with the Earth.

As thinkingman explained, friction of the air against the earth moving in circles also causes that air to move in circles in the same direction. As I explained already, gravity is what makes the atmosphere stay with the earth. All of the atmosphere and the earth don't necessarily spin (on earth axis) in "unison" with the earth, but it does move with the earth (again, because of gravity) around the sun.

Also wind (air) and clouds are part of the atmosphere.

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
How scientists managed to make people believe this, astounds me.

You just don't get it, is not about believe, it is about understanding, it makes logic sense, what is the part you don't understand?
Im not going to say mathematics is about believe because I don't understand them.

It makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Atmosphere gripping a solid planet with friction???

How about, the planet is stationary and the atmosphere is how we feel it. This makes a whole lot of sense.
The spinning planet malarkey is to shoehorn the theory of a centralised sun.

Let me explain this in illiterate terms.

Gravity make pull.
Pull make squish (pressure).
Squish make rub.
Spinning make rub move with push.

Also, if you want, you can put a basket ball in a tub of water, then put some different color food coloring in the water (this will just be so you can see what is happening. Spin the basketball. That's what's happening to the atmosphere, except it's hugging tighter against the surface of the planet than the water is to the basketball. You can test this with water because both air and water are fluids in physics, they operate under the same mechanics, i.e. they form to the shape of their container, the flow downhill with gravity, the less dense parts of the solution tend towards the top, and solids can move through them. Water just happens to be a hell of a lot more dense. But you may as well be asking why the oceans move with the earth's spin.