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
Airy's failure proves nothing of the sort.
He showed that there was no "aether drag". Natural enough, since there is no aether.
Two simple proofs that we DO rotate are the behavior of a Foucault Pendulum and the way gyroscopes are fixed in "inertial space" and point to the same star as the Earth rotates.
Then we have the Coriolis force which makes hurricanes and typhoons spin one way in the Northern hemisphere and the other way in the Southern.
Apparent gravity is slightly less at the equator than at the poles because centrifugal force (yeah, yeah, I know it's just inertia) counters gravity and makes the world bulge. Surveyors found that out long ago by laying out triangles.
Go shitpost on /x/!
Only DURING the slow down.
Not after the stop.
And, while there might be wind during the transition, hurricanes would gradually fade out with the Coriolis force.
Interesting read.
I didn't expect this many pointers. Thanks a bunch! Maybe I will limit this as the scope gets very wide.
I have read somewhere that a supercontinent will form belting earth and 2 oceans top and down. Is these accurate?
Also, I'm interested in the lost magnetic field part. Will even humans survive with it being removed?
Wouldn't the earth just die?
This is what happened to Mars. Because of it's slow rotation it's core died and the planet couldn't maintain a magnetosphere, meaning water just evaporated into space, and rust was left behind which explains the redness of the surface.
If the global atmospheric circulation starts due to the Sun heating only half the planet, I don't see it stopping even after the Earth is completely motionless, inertia will make sure of that.
>Foucault Pendulum
False, they have to manually started and don't move for very long.
>Then we have the Coriolis force which makes hurricanes and typhoons spin one way in the Northern hemisphere and the other way in the Southern.
That's due to the earth's magnetic field, nothing to do with rotation of the earth that's retarded.
>Apparent gravity is slightly less at the equator than at the poles because centrifugal force (yeah, yeah, I know it's just inertia) counters gravity and makes the world bulge.
More bullshit. Where's the scientific proof of this bulge?
I see it stopping because of symmetry.
Friction of the air with the surface will bring everything to a standstill unless the system is continually "pumped". If you have a symmetrical temperature gradient, getting cooler in all directions from a central point, there's no driving force.
Look, temperature differentials drive the weather and create hurricanes. Right? When hurricanes move away from the equator and into the Northern Atlantic, the ocean surface is no longer sufficiently warmer than the air immediately above to make up for the losses due to friction. So the hurricane dies out. Storms are continually dissipating energy even when they're not tearing up cities.
A one face Earth would have a hot side and a cold side (until the atmosphere condensed) but the distance between the two would be large. It's abrupt changes in temperature that move the wind. The Fronts on a weather map.
Humans would survive the loss of the field. It would happen slowly. The turbulence in the iron core would take a long time to die even without overall rotation. Probably more cancers.
The Earth would not lose atmosphere like Mars. The Solar Wind sped the process up, but Mars was always too small (insufficient gravity well) to hold only its air molecules.
>That's due to the earth's magnetic field
no, it's not, you're fucking retarded
show proof how exactly Earth's magnetosphere would make tropical cyclones spin a certain way
Also why Tropical cyclones never form within 5° of the Equator due to the magnetosphere.
I said to go away, asshole!
You are either a brainlet, a troll, or a Russian working on the Make America Stupid project.
So nothing is going to convince you.
On the 1-chance-in 100,000 you're sincere, learn a little physics and come back in 20 years or so.
Just look at a diagram of the earth's magnetic field, that's all the evidence you need.
The reason they don't form at the equator is because there's not enough magnetic "spin" there in either direction, it cancels itself out.
>Just look at a diagram of the earth's magnetic field, that's all the evidence you need.
if that's what you call evidence, then i was wrong to insult the retards
Yes I'm a Russian bot, who are you working for I wonder?
Didn't think you had an argument.
>Humans would survive the loss of the field
For how long? Even if it wouldn't die instantly, won't even a small loss of it will mess up humans?
I think the XKCD guy wrote something on this in his book.
If it stopped instantaneously the entire surface of the earth would be ripped to shreds by the speed of the wind. Then one half of the earth would start boiling while the other froze. But after awhile the moon would act like a spring and jumpstart the earths rotation although the moon would now be traveling in the opposite direction across the sky.
No. Look at the people who want to go to Mars. They're not going to just keel over. once beyond the vanAllens. And it's not even as bad as being in space because we still have the atmosphere on top of us (until it condenses out.)
Airline pilots and people living in Denver are the sort of thing I'm thinking.
The increased radiation would also affect crops and animals.
If the spin stopped, lack of a magnetic field would be the LEAST of our problems.
Yeah, the sudden stop was what Wells wrote about. The OP realized that and asked about 20 years.
You make a good point about the Moon. Considering how weak the interaction is though, it would take millennia before the Sun moved visibly in the sky.
Oh, almost forgot. When the OP said "stopped rotating on it's own axis", I automatically assumed he meant "relative to the Sun. If we stopped relative to the distant stars, then the Sun would still move all the way around the Earth, but the "day" would be equal to the current year.
Thanks for confirming this. I read somewhere that with magnetosphere removed, earth will be exposed to harmful cosmic stuffs, so I imagined deserted earth, no biological life above (some may evolve) because too hot and people living underground. I guess this could wait.
Yes I meant in its own axis so 6 mo daytime/nighttime. Sorry for not being clear.
If the field vanished (as it does occasionally, during reversals) but the spin continued, radiation at the surface would increase. Damage the ecosystem and maybe force us to spend less time in the open, but past reversals haven't wiped out life.
6 months of day and 6 months of night?
Not what most of the responders were talking about. I think.
No hurricanes. Screwed up climate. AVERAGE temperature of the planet wouldn't change.
6 month nights are what you get in Antarctica. The penguins survive, though I wouldn't say they thrive. Same applies in the North. Anywhere within 23 degrees of the pole, within the Arctic circle. Not a great life (Canadians and Siberians may disagree with me) but not dead, dead, DEAD.