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At its equator, the Earth rotates at approximately 1,040 mph. But what if it suddenly stopped?
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You and everything else could fly at hundreds of miles per hour, unless you’re at the poles.
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In reality, the Earth’s rotation is slowing at an estimated rate of 2.3 milliseconds every century.
“To the world, I want to get off.” This exasperated phrase has been around since the 1950s and is used in both classical and modern music.
But if the world really stopped spinning, the consequences would belong less in a romantic musical and more in an apocalyptic horror movie.
What would happen if the Earth suddenly stopped?
Imagine you are walking along a sunny beach somewhere along the equator. The Earth below you is spinning east at 1,040 miles per hour (1,674 kilometers/hour).
But because you, the sand, and everything around you move at the same speed, your walk feels slow and deliberate.
Then the world beneath you stops and you get off. Rather, they fire you.
Thanks to Newton’s first law of inertia, you initially fly east at approximately 1,040 miles per hour. No matter where you land, whether in the ocean or on land, the force of the impact will probably kill you.
“The water would also feel this sudden acceleration,” said Joseph Levy, associate professor of Earth and environmental geosciences at Colgate University. So you would probably see the ocean sloshing around a bit before impact.
Trees and buildings would also not be safe, despite being rooted in the ground. “Earth materials are strong under compression but very weak under tension,” Levy said.
In other words, that brick building nearby can hold hundreds of people because its floors and support beams become compact under its weight.
But the inertia pushing the building east from the Earth’s sudden stop would be much stronger than the mortar holding the bricks together, so the entire structure could break, Levy said.
If it makes you feel any better, your hypothetical cousin in Antarctica would probably survive with a few bruises. “Near the poles, the axis of rotation is much smaller, so the rotation speed is much lower,” Levy said.
But you would have to be very close: within 89.9 degrees latitude, Levy said, or about seven miles from the poles. At that distance, you would probably stumble forward while walking.
But your friends in Denmark or Australia probably wouldn’t make it. Most places humans inhabit are far enough from the poles that their residents still fly to them. hundreds of miles per hour.
What would happen if the Earth gradually stopped rotating?
“In natural systems, nothing really stops completely instantly,” Levy said.
And what happens if the Earth slows down in days or weeks?
A gradual slowdown might stop you from launching into the sky, but once it stops, you’d still be in a lot of trouble.
“Throughout the year, as the Earth orbits the Sun, half of the planet would be at night and the other half would be in full light, but the other half would constantly change throughout the year,” Levy said.
Instead of 12 hours, a “day” could last six months. The uninterrupted sun would burn nearby crops and evaporate much of the water on half the planet, Levy added.
The next six-month night probably wouldn’t be much better. The lack of light and heat would likely kill off many remaining plants and freeze the water into ice sheets.
Higher latitudes might be safer, since the sunlight would not be too intense near the poles, Levy said. But you would have to get used to a nomadic lifestyle, always chasing daylight around the world.
You may also have to deal with unexpected weather.
On a rotating Earth, most of the solar radiation reaches the planet’s equator. “Generally speaking, warm air rises over the equator and falls over the poles after it cools,” Levy said. Ocean currents follow a similar cycle of rise and fall.
But when only half of the planet receives intense sunlight for months at a time, the planet suffers a second lateral temperature gradient, making predicting the weather twice as difficult.
“The winds would hit the terminator, the shadow line, bringing cold air in from the night side, where it would warm and rise on the day side,” Levy added.
Could the world really stop spinning someday?
Don’t panic, but the Earth’s rotation is slowing down thanks to a process called tidal braking.
Our Moon’s gravity creates infinitely little resistance to our planet’s spin, so every century, Earth’s rotation slows a little more. 2.3 millisecondsaccording to NASA.
But it is unlikely that the Moon will ever completely stop the Earth. “The Earth is much larger than the Moon and, as a result, has much more angular momentum,” Levy said.
One way to significantly slow down the Earth’s rotation would be if humanity treated it as a giant energy source. For example, we could theoretically use the Earth as steering wheel systemstoring the kinetic energy of its spin to apply it to our energy needs.
“If the planet’s spinning momentum were used to meet all human energy needs, it would still take something like 1 million years to slow the planet to a stop,” Levy said.
It is virtually impossible for any object in space to stop the Earth’s rotation before then. “Earth’s angular momentum is too large for anything short of a complete cataclysm to slow it down,” Levy said.
So the world won’t stop so you can get out soon, and that’s probably a good thing.
Read the original article on Business Insider
