WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE EARTH STOPPED SPINNING (SPOILER ALERT: YOU WONT COME TO A HALT )

INTRODUCTION

As a kid I always loved watching cartoons and marvel movies. I still do. I have seen in some scenes of this cartoons and movies where a super hero or villain reversed the earth spin or stop the earth’s spin.

In these science fictional movies and cartoons, the earths rotation is directly proportional to time (That is, when the earth rotation is reversed, there is a reverse in time and when the earth’s rotation is stopped time pauses as well).

After watching all these and making great use of my mind and imaginations, I couldn’t help but wonder what would actually happen if the earth stops spinning. I know this question has crossed some of our minds atleast once in our life.

Don’t be too scared, the earth’s would not stop spinning anytime soon. As a matter of fact, scientists say that the possibility of the earth to stop rotating is equal to zero in the next few billions of years to come.

Everyone reading this would be dead before this ever happens : ).

Now let’s get ready for this mind experiment because we will all need to put our imaginations into its fullest use to view this new world the way I want us to view it.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE EARTH STOPS MOVING AND ITS TIDALLY LOCKED TO OUR STAR( SUN).-THE EFFECTS THAT IT WOULD HAVE ON EARTH AS A PLANET.

The earth spins on its axis along the equator with a velocity of 1000 miles per hour (1600kph) as it orbits the sun but it’s rotation is much slower when you get closer to the poles. Life would be impossible without this rotation.

Scientists say that billions of years ago the earth used to rotate faster than it does now. An unknown planet collided with the earth in the beginning of our young solar system and this collision led to the formation of the moon and the alignment and rotation of the earth was changed.

Since then, the rotation of the earth has been gradually slowing down. It is also believed that the moon used to rotate faster too, before it became tidally locked (this is a situation where a planetary object or a moon’s orbital period equates it’s rotational period).

Coincidentally, this is the same thing that happens when a large moon is orbiting a planet.

A great example of this, is the earth’s moon. The earth and the moon used to rotate independently of each other during our early solar system until the earth’s gravity grabbed into the tidal bulges and caused the rotation of the moon to slow down.

The moon on the other hand moved away from the earth with a distance of about 238,555 miles (which is its current position) in order to compensate the lost momentum.

However, the moon has the same impact on the earth and the earth rotation is being slowed down by those same tidal forces that cause the tides on planet earth, which makes the moon to continue to drift away a few centimeters per year to compensate.

There are actually two scenarios in this experiment which includes;

• an instance where the earth stops spinning but isn’t tidally locked to the sun
• an instance where the earth stops spinning but it’s tidally locked to the sun.

The earlier would cause the earth to have 6months of light and 6 months of darkness. But for this to actually make sense we would be looking at the later to best explore our imaginations.

Before we proceed, let’s remember that the earth spins on it axis at the equator at a velocity of 1000mph and a sudden pause in this speed would be disastrous.
Disastrous in the sense that everything, I mean everything on the surface of the earth would move spontaneously at a speed of over 1000 miles per hour in a sideways direction.

We wouldn’t just fall off the earth as you light be imagining now hahahaha. We would stay tacked yet jerked forward since we require a velocity of over 248000 miles per hour to escape the earth’s gravity.

Could you imagine everything moving at a speed of over 1000 miles per hour? I bet you’re trying to fit that in.
Everything would experience a sideways deceleration of 3/4 of the earth’s gravity as it moves across the earth with a velocity of over 1600kph.

Spontaneously, down would be at an angle of 30 degrees from vertical. The sudden stop in the rotation of the the planet would generate a force which would rip buildings and structures off their foundation, anything that isn’t bedrock and cause them to fly across the earth at 1000 miles per hour and destroying everything in a giant and disastrous debris path.

Well, buildings and structures wouldn’t be the only thing flying across the earth. The oceans would spontaneously slosh in a sideways direction across the planet with unbelievably high waves(miles and miles high) and tsunamis so high that we couldn’t possible see the top all moving at 1600kph towards us.

Both of these catastrophic events would possibly mean the end of life on earth as we would think it. The atmospheric pressure would be so high that it would create very disastrous winds and deadly storms.

Centrifugal force as we know it forces the earth to bulge along the equator because the earth rotates. Sadly when the earth stops spinning there is no rotation and when there is no rotation there is no bulge causing the all extra Water (Southern and Arctic Ocean ) that was kept in place to lose place and rush back in direction of the poles.

The fact that the earth stopped spinning doesn’t mean that it’s inner core would stop as well. As a matter of fact you have to note that the inner core of the earth rotates at a faster rate. Earth is a highly volcanic planet and may erupt in ways we would never have imagined.

The tectonic forces above and below would enter into a new conflict resulting in the eruption of super volcanoes across the planet. Earth which is tidally locked to the sun would have one half of its part always facing the sun and the other half would remain in permanent darkness.

Earth is located at a circum-stellar Habitable zone which is 93,000,000 miles away from the sun in order to support plant and animal life. With this being said, there might be some places on earth that could be hospitable or habitable by animals and plant but on the two extreme parts of the earth life could be impossible for life to survive assuming that anything was able to survive the last series of catastrophes.

If there was any significant amount life left on the planet after the previous catastrophe, there will have to live on the twilight zone between the two halves of the planet.The earth still maintains its distance from the sun which means that the part of the earth that would always face the sun would not burn down but it would be receiving more intense and direct sunlight resulting in more heat.

The rise in the temperature would result in high level of weathering and cause strong rain. The temperature of the earth is regulated by global weathering but in the case where only half of it under-goes this process, atmospheric gases would build up and would create more heat, thid phenomena is called “the run-away green house effect”.

The oceans would boil up as result of an increase in temperature by clouds of gases. The middle or the sub-stellar point of the hot part of the planet would be so hot that almost anything would not survive.

Let’s talk about the cold half of the planet.
The loss of the sun’s heat from the cold part of the plant will make the atmosphere turn into a dense gas and then this gas will condense to liquid and then it will freeze and keep condensing and creating a vacuum that will extract or pull air from the hot part of the planet where the gases in the atmosphere would be expanding and this might make this part of the planet livable.

The storms that would come with exchange of the hot and cold air would counter the earlier claim of the atmosphere being livable. These storms would be disastrous and would exist on both sides of the planet, they will be so strong that they could rip rocks out of the earth and crush it to sand.

There would be a pause in the generation of the magnetic field of the earth and progressive decay overtime. This is because the magnetic fields of the earth is claimed to be regenerated by a dynamo effect that involves the earth rotation.

The earth magnetic field plays a significant role in keeping the atmosphere in check and also protects us from cosmic rays.

CONCLUSION
The earth isn’t going to stop spinning anytime soon, this article is just a mind experiment to try to imagine what the earth would look like if it stops rotating.
Scientist say that the rotation of the earth is slower than it has been over the previous billion years so I couldn’t help but wonder how life would be when the earth stops spinning.

If any appreciable amount of life is left after all these catastrophe, living on earth in this condition would be a very big challenge. Technological advancements may help sustain our life but we would not have control over the environment for crop growth in order to ensure food security which would be a major threat to our lives.

REFERENCES
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IMAGE SOURCES
All images are from free sources and eligible for commercial use.