On Earth The Sun Actually Rises In The West And Sets In The East

Axial Tilt

Some planets, such as Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter, have axes that are almost completely perpendicular, or straight up-and-down.

Earth's axis is not perpendicular. It has an axial tilt, or obliquity. Axial tilt is the angle between the planet's rotational axis and its orbital axis. A planet's orbital axis is perpendicular to to the ecliptic or orbital plane, the thin disk surrounding the sun and extending to the edge of the solar system.

Earth's axial tilt (also known as the obliquity of the ecliptic) is about 23.5 degrees. Due to this axial tilt, the sun shines on different latitudes at different angles throughout the year. This causes the seasons.

Uranus has the largest axial tilt in the solar system. Its axis is tilted about 98 degrees, so its north pole is nearly on its equator. Astronomers suspect that this extreme tilt was caused by a collision with an Earth-sized planet billions of years ago, soon after Uranus formed.

Axial Precession

Earth's axis appears stable, but it actually wobbles very slowly, like a spinning top. It takes Earth's axis about 26,000 years to complete a circular "wobble." This wobble is called axial precession.

Earth’s axis helps determine the North Star, and axial precession helps change it. Currently, for instance, Earth's axis points toward a star called Polaris. Polaris, which gets its name because it is almost directly above the North Pole, is the current North Star.

Polaris will not always be the North Star, however. The Earth's axis is slowly wobbling away from Polaris. In another 13,000 years, it will point toward the new North Star, a star called Vega.

Chronometers Changed the Game

The pendulum clock was developed during the 17th century. However, these clocks were not sufficiently accurate to be used at sea to determine longitude and for scientific time measurement in the 18th century.

In 1764, the chronometer was invented. Chronometers measured time accurately in spite of motion or varying conditions, and became popular instruments among many merchant mariners during the 19th century.

Clocks Based on the Sun

Even after the chronometer many towns and cities set clocks based on sunsets and sunrises. Dawn and dusk occur at different times, but time differences between distant locations were barely noticeable before the 19th century because of long travel times and the lack of long-distance communications.

The use of local solar time became increasingly awkward as railways and telecommunications improved. Time zones were, therefore, a compromise, relaxing the complex geographic dependence while still allowing local time to be approximate with mean solar time.

GPS Shows Different Meridian

Since everyone is running around with their own GPS tracker or mobile phones with GPS capability, a visit to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London may have become a slightly disappointing affair for some. The observatory is home to the Airy Transit Circle, a telescope designed by George Biddell Airy in the 19th century, which marks the location of the prime meridian, the line running along 0° of longitude, where the Earth's western and eastern hemispheres meet.

However, if you follow your GPS device to 0° longitude, you will end up a good distance away from the famous line marking the meridian in the observatory's Meridian Courtyard. So, have they been luring tourists to the wrong place for decades?

Not Wrong, Just Different

Yes and no. It is true that the meridian that runs through the observatory has lost its status as the world's sole reference point for longitude. Navigation systems such as the GPS now use the IERS Reference Meridian (IRM), which runs about 334 feet (102 meters) east of the observatory.

However, although the world is now using an updated version, the location of the prime meridian is not wrong as such—it's just a different kind of meridian. It is defined by the location of the telescope, which was originally used to measure the passage of certain stars to feed data into an astronomical coordinate system, which, in its day, served as the basis for global navigation and timekeeping. Since the location of this original prime meridian is defined by the location of the telescope, it cannot be wrong: it is always where the telescope is.

Arbitrary Location

To understand how there can be two different prime meridians, both being in the correct location for their purposes, it's important to bear in mind that meridians and longitudes are a human invention, so there is essentially no right or wrong way to place them. While latitudes are defined by the Earth's shape and movement—the poles at 90° latitude are where the Earth's axis meets the Earth's surface and the equator at 0° latitude marks the middle point between the poles—there is no natural reason for any longitude to be used as the prime meridian.

At the International Meridian Conference in 1884, with multiple candidates to choose from, that honor was bestowed upon the longitude of the Airy Transit Circle in Greenwich. Apart from serving as a navigational reference point, the local mean time at the Greenwich Meridian now also served as the basis for the global time standard, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), before being replaced by UTC in the 1960s.

"I will not only decimate your case, but I'll further chip away until all that's left is regret for daring to troll a masterful debater as myself."

"Debate properly or concede don't even attempt to make a joke of me..."

"The first thing I'm going to do is..."

"...point out that the 'West'...is in fact closer to being east of the 'East'"

"Now, there's no direct flights from the east of Asia to west of USA"

"I'm stating facts, so what we find is [flights] stop over at Middle East"

"What's quite undeniable is that Asia is, without a doubt, indeed, East of the Americas if we want to be exact."

"We can say North vs South dichotomy is less relative than West and East"

"You will see that 'Eastern Hemisphere' and 'Western Hemisphere' are purely invented by us, humans, as a social construct."

"All that aside, Pro will find that 'actually' the sun sets on the west just as much as it rises on [the west] and sets in the east just as much as rises on it."

I love to debate truisms that seem false...false falsisms I guess they're called?

I also love that scientific concepts can be looked at differently.

Imagine a tiny version of yourself standing in the middle of the wooden disk. And imagine that the outside rim of the disk represents your horizon. On Summer Solstice, you would see the Sun rise on your "horizon" at the eastern point of the longest track. It would follow the track high in your sky, and eventually set on the western horizon. It would be up for about 17 "hours", thus making summertime days long and warm. On the Winter Solstice, you would observe the Sun rising at the western end of the smallest track. It wouldn't rise high in the sky, and would be up for only about 6 or 7 hours, making your days short on daylight and cold. At the Spring and the Fall equinoxes, the Sun would rise at the east end of the middle track and set at the west end. Your days would be exactly half daylight and half nighttime and you would experience typical warm/cool spring and fall climates.

The Sun, the Moon, the planets, and the stars all rise in the east and set in the west. And that's because Earth spins -- toward the east.

For a moment, let us ignore Earth's orbit around the Sun (as well as the Sun's and solar system's revolution around the center of the Galaxy, and even the Galaxy's journey through the universe). For the moment, let us just think about one motion - - Earth's spin (or rotation) on its axis.

Earth rotates or spins toward the east, and that's why the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars all rise in the east and make their way westward across the sky. Suppose you are facing east - the planet carries you eastward as it turns, so whatever lies beyond that eastern horizon eventually comes up over the horizon and you see it!

"You will see that 'Eastern Hemisphere' and 'Western Hemisphere' are purely invented by us, humans, as a social construct...I am willing to play along with Pro's social construct...I am going to prove what we did to make the socially constructed West and East operate...Pro will find that 'actually' the sun sets on the west just as much as it rises on it."

"I say that if you are on the Western Hemisphere, the sun both rises and sets for you"

"The Japanese observe sunsets...Asia is, without a doubt, indeed, East of the Americas."

"if you are on the socially constructed Eastern Hemisphere, [the sun both rises and sets for you]."

"The rising and setting are defined as visual to the Horizon in the debate description."

1. Pro has to prove that the sun actually rises on 'the west' and actually sets on 'the east' on Earth. There is no 'East' or 'West' on Earth in absolute poles or hemispheres beyond social construct meaning it is not 'actual' at all. Thus, the only forms of west and east are either relative to your current position or socially constructed ones that hold the Greenwich Median as their centre and which timezones revolve around.
   
2. In the definitions that the debate description has (which are the only ones sacred to the debate if a later one conflicts them since both debaters agreed to the description, not to later content) says that the West is the 'Western part of a designated area' and East is the 'Eastern part of a designated area'. Thus, following from 1, we see that every day in the socially constructed West and East, the Sun actually rises first and foremost to the Earth/world in the East (due to socially constructed timezones and world spinning anti-clockwise around itself AND ALSO anticlockwise around the sun according to NASA as previously shown, if you need a source for both here: https://www.spaceacademy.net.au/library/notes/anticlok.htm, https://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/StarFAQ1.htm#q26) and that the Sun actually sets on Earth/world on the West due to the exact same reasoning as why it rises on the East.
   
3.  If one then points at me, Con, and says 'hold up, they don't actually count as there is no actual East or West on Earth other than relative to your position' then I win further as I point out the definition of 'set' and 'rise' are such that no matter where you are, the Sun rises on your East and sets on your West but that the resolution is what Pro has to uphold as absolutely correct and not incorrect.
   
4. The Western Hemisphere is both east of and west of the Eastern Hemisphere which alone decimates Pro's case as Con wins if the Earth has no true West or East.