What if the Earth Stopped Spinning?

Slowly or instantly stopping?

Because if it is instant, the inertial effects would be awesome - the friction generated would probably boil the oceans off

ummm...won't need to use microwave ovens to cook tea anymore, just throw your snags out onto the front porch and they will be cooked rather instantly.

...skinny bugger like me would be able to bench press 300 kg's without raising a sweat.

...once the atmosphere has been fried to oblivion, you can now get a start on that sandblasting job you have allways wanted done. So you push your car out onto the road and watch the tiny meteorites clean your car bare of all paint.

...the quest for free energy will be no more as there is now plenty of energy to go around.

...that salon tan your missus has always been nagging you about (she has been wanting to spend your $$$ you saved for that carton of piss for ages) can now be done free of charge.

It will, eventually, though it's going to take an awfully long time. The sun may have expanded ito a red giant and swallowed it by then. So it doesn't matter, because, either life will be extinct before or at that time, or it will have galloped off somewhere else beforehand.

Consider conservation of momentum. Whatever stops it suddenly by collision is going to collect an awful lot of it.

OH NO!

Does this mean that I should start removing the wind farms? Surely they must be slowing down the earth's rotation.

Rotation of what ?

If everything else continued to move relative to Earths former 'movement', it might work out OK. We'd have to bin those models of the planets moving around the sun, and upgrade to something more complex. Come to think of it, I could clamp one of them from above with something gripping onto Earth ; Night time/tide etc, it should all be fine ;

What would the climate be like? Maybe no rain except for the "twilight zone"?

Would the only livable area be at the "twilight zone"?

Would there be tidal action? Would there be any dissolved oxygen in water?

Non rotational earth = Eventual Death to all.

Rotational earth - eventual death to all as well.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

If you were at the equator you and everything else would take off at about 1-2,000mph. Since this is not an orbital escape velocity you would eventually crash back into the earth. I don't think there is much of anything on earth that is anchored strongly enough to resist this acceleration. I suspect all buildings would be ripped off their foundations, then succumbing to any residual acceleration. This is good for starters. Would this be a new take on the Day the Earth Stood Still?

Hello haricool, obviously this is a completely hypothetical question............ Taking it as such, must 'large' living creatures will be killed pretty much instantly. The Earth spins at about 1600 Kilometers and hour. The induced power/speed from the suddenly stopped earth given to people and all other animals, and also any buildings, the soil, mountains and any water would be spinning into a melange. Anything which is 'apparently' solid, would no longer be in that state. The only reason they do seem solid is because of the atmosphere. This gives things 'weight'. Whether it be a particle of dust, or, a complete city, all will be in this melange. So any living things are not likely to be living for long! I am assuming the earth stops instantly. This would probably mean the fiercely hot molten center of the earth, which in fact is almost the entire global size, with just a relatively thin few kilometers of solid stuff like continents, would virtually instantly explode..................... end! There is other ideas like the earth taking years to slow and finally stop spinning, and the joking kind of idea of people and things being able to continue to live here, but in reality it would be a disaster worse than anyone can dream of. Interesting thought though! Take care

Strange, I always though Gravity was responsible for the weight of things, including the atmosphere?

Weight IS due to the gravitational pull of the earth's mass acting on the mass of the other physical entities near it, including both us and our atmosphere.

We fall towards the surface of the earth in our atmosphere due to the fact our density (mass per volume) is greater than that of the surrounding atmospheric gasses. Fish can swim suspended in water for example due to the fact their density is very close to that of the water they are swimming in.

I like the idea of the earth gradually slowing down. Days and nights would slowly get longer increasing temperature swings between day-time high and night-time low temperatures. We would all be repeatedly fried for many long days and frozen for many long nights before the earth came to a 'safe' slow stop!

Kind regards,

Chris

Yeah sounds kinda cool!

Hello Lemmy70, Sorry my friend, I could not recall the word "GRAVITY"! I realize what happens, OK? Take care.............

This leads one to ask the rather obvious question ....what causes earth to spin in the first place and why does our moon not spin?

Surely it does, just enough to show us the same side all the time......which is another question entirely:-" Why does the moon spin exactly the same speed as it travels around the earth?"

Is it the only moon in our universe that does that?

The earth is spinning in the first place having been hit lots of times throughout the hundreds of millions of years of its history, by asteroids impacting its surface at a tangent. The only impact that wouldn't have made it spin would have been a direct hit in the centre, perpendicular to the surface.

I remember reading once (a long time ago, can't remember where) that our moon was formed from re-ejected matter following an asteroid impact, just like dropping a single drop of water in a bucket full of water 'bounces' back out.

When the lump of asteroid we now know as our moon collided with the earth it momentarily stuck to it causing it to be rotating at approximately the same speed. Luck dictated that the re-ejected matter happened to rebound from the earth's surface at just the right speed to come to rest in orbit around us.

Ejected matter leaving at slower speeds fell back to earth and merged with it, while matter leaving at higher speeds didn't get trapped by the earth's gravitational pull and escaped, disappearing into deep space never to be seen by us again.

I can only theorise why the moon appears to rotate at exactly the same speed as us. Perhaps it's rotating at such a close rotational speed we just can't see it's any different.

If it's at an identical rotational velocity it suggests that the mass of the moon may not be distributed evenly within it, so the denser side would experience more pull from the earth's gravity than the less dense side, rather analogous to a boat always floating the right way up wherever it is on the earth's oceans for example.

Chris

The earth is spinning in the first place having been hit lots of times throughout the hundreds of millions of years of its history, by asteroids impacting its surface at a tangent

So most of the impacts came from one direction, and only hit one side, or what? The idea of conserved momentum from nebula formation sounds more likely, though I'm not much surer of that! There's probably a raft of theory on this one.

Alright Kris, I'll give you a GA. And that consevation of motion translates to earths core as well, which spins faster than the surface. The moon appears stationary because of added mass to one side, which is attracted to the earth more than the other side.

See?

I'd give you a GA too, but your final part wasn't quite complete ; The moon is made of cream cheese which, like buttered bread, always wants to fall sticky side down. The Sun has melted all the 'dark side' so it's nice and smooth, but the Earth has a shadowing effect that causes re-melt and the appearance of so called 'craters'. NASA just got lucky and landed on a solid spot. The intermittent/crackly comms was just the astronauts trying to spread the stuff on crackers. The 'green-cheese' thing is just a myth.

The moon does spin. It rotates on its axis once per revolution around the earth so you only see one side.

To picture this better, walk around a fixed object that represents the earth. First walk around it while facing in the same direction for the entire "orbit". This represents a moon that does not rotate. Notice that you present all sides of your body to the "earth" at the center of your "orbit" when you do not rotate on your axis.

Now circle the "earth" while facing it the entire time. Notice that you have rotated your body, relative to the "earth" one time. This is a bit harder to notice, as your rotation about your axis happens slowly, but you do rotate once per orbit. This is what is happening in space.

The moon doesn't spin because there is an alien civilization on the back side - which was discovered during the Apollo missions, and which is why we have never returned (they told us to leave them alone)

(I don't believe this theory/consipiracy - thought I would just poke fun)

According to the Bible this has already been done and with no great consequences.

This discussion is hypothetical and scientific, not fictional. The bible has no place here.

I second that "emotion"

If it stopped instantly you would be catapulted tangent to the earths surface at a 1000 MPH until you slowed down enough to hit the surface...unless something was in the way! Then "SPLAT!" And so would everything else on the surface be catapulted oceans, buildings, trees and what have you.

If it slowed slowly it would take a very long time to stop completely because of "fly wheel" effect due to the great mass and lack of friction from the vacuum of space.

The sunny side of the earth would heat up to where life as we know it would not be possible and the same would be true on the dark side with the temperature drop. We might me able to survive in the temperate zone between the light and dark where the temperatures would be more moderate.

The speed of the winds would increase to very high velocities because of the heating and cooling of atmosphere on the sunny and dark sides. The sun and moons gravitational pull on the oceans would create mega high tides on the sun side everytime the moon moved between the sun and the earth.

For all we know it is stopping and the rotating and is slowing down....a thought to ponder.

The ultimate thought! None of us reading this will be here to care when it does stop!

Assuming everything was miraculously stopped at the same time, so there was no immediate catastrophe due to the stoppage itself:

We would have but one day per year.
The day-lit side would be very hot, and the night very cold.
The Earth's magnetic field would gradually fall to a low value.
Ultra-violet levels at ground levels would rise dramatically.
Tides would be bi-monthly - low flows, but (I think) higher levels.

Larger mammalian life forms would probably die out. Any plants whose seeds cannot withstand temperatures below -20^OC would almost certainly die out as well.

But, you have to keep in mind that if water from the hot side is evaporated and deposited on the cold side, it sets up an imbalance in weight distribution on the planet.

Eventually, the sun's gravity would act more strongly upon the heavier side, forcing the planet to rotate the snow and ice laden area to face the sun.

So, the planet would start rotating again, albeit probably rather slowly.

On the tangential issue of tidal-lock... has this ever been demonstrated in any sort of "equivalent" experiment? I ask because in the same way that it has been tried to have "life appear" in an environment as similar to the hypothesized state of the earth when life arose, I don't think anyone has succesfully had life appear in these experiments. Tidal-locking may be a good theory but do we have any experimental evidence to strongly endorse the explanation? Just curios.

I've already designed my survival craft - no problems!

Hello HARI,

The question seems to be curious.Before raising the main question,if you could answer how it will get stopped,then comes the consequential derivable answer.Certain phenomenon specific to spacial placement/rotational movement of various cosmic bodies still yet to be confirmed by way of how it happened.

Considering the temperature fluctions from day to night that we experience now I would say that it would get extremely hot on one side of the earth and extremely cold on the other. Other than that, once it stops rotating I will have more information to go on and I will let you know what the other effects are if we are still alive then. (don't hold your breath)

Man I love science fiction..... so how did we get all these unique thoughts together, please tell me they are true?

I am sure there was an H.G.Wells book about someone who wished that the world stopped and it did!!

I think it was "The man who could work miracles". If I remember aright, that taught him a slightly incorrect lesson, and he put everything back to exactly the situation before he discovered his talent - with the exception that this time around he didn't have the talent.

That agrees with my memory......well done.