Hello Veeky Forums. Can you please tell me what will happen to earth if it slowed down and stopped rotating its own axis? I need this for writing a scenario. Basically I'm interested in:
>what might possibly cause it
>effects on nature
>effects on humans
Thanks for the time.
basically you can see the earth as a giant flywheel.
If you read up on flywheels you might get an impression what happens when the rotation stops.
Sorry for not being clear, but I mean not instantaneous. About 20 years time frame to full stopage in linear trend.
The earth isn't rotating though.
Enlighten me my brother...
Wind speed would continually increase. Like 80mph+ depending.
The moon might fly away, causing flooding. Depends on how the momentum is being lost though.
Will wind speed affect the earth's topography? How about it's direction?
>Depends on how momentum is being lost
Can you cite some examples?
It's never been scientifically proven, airy's failure for example proves it isn't moving
Over 20 years? Well, that's safer than Wells' "The Man Who Could Work Miracles".
Days would gradually get longer.
Planetary magnetic field would gradually die out.
I think the winds would die out, not increase. Imagine the limiting case where heat just applied on one side. Air expands and flows into the night. That means the nightside pressure increases until an equilibrium is reached and flow stops. That doesn't happen on Earth because the area being heated keeps moving.
There'd be no flooding. 20 years in long enough for things to "relax" gradually.
There might be increased Earthquakes and volcanos. This would depend on how the retarding force is being applied.
Oceans and, possibly, atmosphere would freeze out on the permanent dark side.
Tidal friction is gradually slowing the rotation of the Earth. The up-and-down movement of the oceans (and the continents too, though it's not as obvious) is turning the planet's rotational energy into heat. It's a slow process. You won't notice in your lifetime. But angular momentum is conserved in a closed system. As the Earth slows, the angular momentum goes into the Moon (primary cause of the tides) and that increases the radius of its orbit. The Moon is receding from Earth a few centimeters a year, easily measurable by the retroreflectors left by the Apollo astronauts. Someday (a few million years) the Moon will have receded until it's no longer (roughly) the same apparent size as the Sun. Then there will be no more total eclipses, only annular ones.
In the far distant future (maybe so far that the Sun will engulf the Earth-Moon system anyway) both Earth and Moon will each have one face turned towards the other, as Pluto and Charon do today.
That's why asked about the mechanism. Any physical process would move the Moon. If you're going to posit some supernatural force, maybe not.
Either way, there'd be no more tides.
> Air expands and flows into the night.
that could result in a global hurricane where warm air rushes into the night side on one side of the planet and cold air rushes into the day on the opposite side, continuing forever and keeping the Earth at about the same temperature