Question: Why does the Earth rotate around the sun and not just rotate on a spot without rotating around the sun?

Roan Haggar answered on 10 Nov 2020:

Hi! The Sun is very large (much bigger than the Earth), which means that it produces a very strong gravitational field. If the Earth stayed still then it would be pulled towards the Sun by gravity, and eventually would crash into the Sun, which would be bad news for us all!
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By orbiting around the Sun, the Earth is able to stay at the same distance. It is moving at just the right speed that it doesn’t fall towards the Sun, but also doesn’t fly off into space.
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It’s a little hard to explain why this happens, but it’s similar to what happens on rollercoasters. If you ride a loop-the-loop on a rollercoaster, you stay in your seat. But, if the rollercoaster stopped moving whilst you were upside down, you’d fall out because of gravity. This is kind of like what’s happening with the Earth — if it stopped moving then it would fall into the Sun, but by moving around it can stay at the same distance. I hope this helps!