# Our world guess what would happen



## mikeydt1 (Mar 26, 2021)

if our world was to stop spinning on its axis what would happen to our seas?

actually when i knew about this it sort of scared the willies out of me.


----------



## Docb (Mar 26, 2021)

No comment.


----------



## mikeydt1 (Mar 26, 2021)

its only a quiz doc to get the brains going a bit.


----------



## C&E Guy (Mar 26, 2021)

In the James Bond film Moonraker, when they are in the Space Station, the spinning gets stopped and they lose all gravity.

Wouldn't the same thing happen?


The other question is:  Would the seas be deeper if they weren't full of sponges?


----------



## Docb (Mar 26, 2021)

mikeydt1 said:


> its only a quiz doc to get the brains going a bit.


Its far too complicated for me.  Anyway, if I can't get a bouncing ball right, then what chance of this one.  I'll trust whatever you have found on the internet, after all that's infallible. 

PS... are you talking about a sudden stop or a stopping over a time period.  If the latter, how long a period.

PPS... memo to self.  Behave.


----------



## Robin (Mar 26, 2021)

Docb said:


> PS... are you talking about a sudden stop or a stopping over a time period. If the latter, how long a period.


I was just about to ask the same question, following on from your post on the bouncing balls thread, about establishing the parameters of your experiment first.
I'm guessing a sudden stop from within would mean that the air and water would carry on moving and we’d get hurricanes and tidal waves, and a slowing down would mean the equatorial bulge would disappear and the water would spread towards the poles, so the U.k. would drown.
There also the problem that if we slowed down so that, like Mercury, we always presented the same face of ten Earth to the sun, longitudinally, half of us would get unbearably hot and the other half would freeze.
I think I’ll vote for carrying on with the status quo, thanks!


----------



## mikeydt1 (Mar 30, 2021)

sorry for the delays Doc it is over a period of time.  i like the telling yourself to behave better than standing in the naughty corner


----------



## mikeydt1 (Mar 30, 2021)

should of added i have experienced fast motion when i was young we used to play on a round about as they called them and did dares spinning on the thing as fast as possible and the obvious happened it wanted to chuck you off.  i also experienced the abrupt stop and it didn't chuck you off as you would expect it to.  the stuff we did back then.


----------



## Andy HB (Mar 30, 2021)

Robin said:


> I was just about to ask the same question, following on from your post on the bouncing balls thread, about establishing the parameters of your experiment first.
> I'm guessing a sudden stop from within would mean that the air and water would carry on moving and we’d get hurricanes and tidal waves, and a slowing down would mean the equatorial bulge would disappear and the water would spread towards the poles, so the U.k. would drown.
> There also the problem that if we slowed down so that, like Mercury, we always presented the same face of ten Earth to the sun, longitudinally, half of us would get unbearably hot and the other half would freeze.
> I think I’ll vote for carrying on with the status quo, thanks!


On the hurricane front, we actually get hurricanes because of the corriolis (sp?) effect. Air travelling from high to low pressure begins to spin because of that effect which, in turn, is because the earth is spinning. If the earth doesn't spin, then no corriolis effect and so no spinning air and so no hurricanes. However, I presume there will still be some wind whilst the high and low pressures even up but I also presume that everything will just settle down over time.

As to what happens to the seas, I think you are correct about the water spreading to the poles.

Now on to the Mercury thought. If there was no spin at all, then over the course of a year the earth would have shown all its surface to the sun. For it to be showing only one face to the sun all the time, its day would have to be one year long as well, so it would have to retain some spin.

Andy (did I manage to sound convincing?) HB


----------



## Robin (Mar 30, 2021)

Andy HB said:


> Andy (did I manage to sound convincing?) HB


Very convincing! I was wondering about the sea and the air. I was assuming if the Earth came to a sudden stop, the momentum in the air and water might make them carry on for a bit, causing winds and wave build up.(as indeed anything loose on the planet, people, cars, ships, your mantelpiece clock) Depends if gravity keeps them in place. I remember gravity being a weak force, easily overcome, for example every time you lift your foot off the ground, or your head from the pillow, or indeed weaker than the forces attracting the molecules in a piece of wood, which is why your morning cuppa doesn’t fall straight through the kitchen table.
Agreed, the sun would have to exert enough pull on the Earth,( as it does with Mercury which is far closer to it) to make the Earth day one year long, so it always presented the same face (as indeed the moon does to the Earth). If the Earth was completely still, then yes, we'd all get a toasting once a year.


----------



## mikeyB (Mar 31, 2021)

Gravity has nothing to do with the Earth stopping rotating. Or, to put it the other way round, if the Earth stopped rotating gravity would stay the same, so nothing would fall off the mantelpiece. We would all get 6 months of daylight and 6 months of night. Humanity would die out, after a period of turning feral, no food would be grown - at least, not enough.

The moon would stay the same, apart from we would see the “Dark Side” for half of the month, as the moon rotates once in 28 days.


----------



## Robin (Mar 31, 2021)

mikeyB said:


> if the Earth stopped rotating gravity would stay the same, so nothing would fall off the mantelpiece


It wasn’t so much falling off floorwards I was theorising about, but falling off because they carried on sideways after the earth had stopped, reached the end of he mantelpiece, and then fell. Like carrying a tray of drinks, and stopping suddenly because the dog runs across your path. The drinks carry on and slide off the tray, unless you do a forwards and upwards circular motion with the tray to keep them balanced.(or you have a super-nonstick tray)
Surely we still wouldn’t see the dark side of the moon, if the moon continued to orbit us every 28 days, still rotating once every 28 days. We would see the usual face of the moon for half the month, if we were in a position where the sun illuminated it for us. If we were doing our stint of 6 months in the sunlight, we wouldn’t see it at all as a full moon.
(but you are quite right, we’d all be dead anyway, either from starvation, or becoming a casualty of war when the inevitable fighting broke out)


----------



## mikeydt1 (Mar 31, 2021)

i want to know what would happen if the world was to speed up would we all end up holding on for dear life then flung off in to deep space? could just see myself waving going past the space station.


----------



## mikeydt1 (Apr 1, 2021)

right here we go - if the Earth was to stop spinning on its axis gradually the oceans would migrate towards the poles from the Equator.

and i would say to everyone run like hell


----------



## mikeyB (Apr 8, 2021)

The Earth actually is slowing down. That’s why they have added the occasional leap second to adjust the 24 hour clock. The rate of slowing is such that nobody will notice for about a billion years, so we needn’t worry. There may be a 25 hour day, which is good news if you work a 40 hour week. More spare time.


----------



## Grldtnr (Apr 8, 2021)

I don't give a toss! Brakes are never that good! 
Yes, the earth's rotation isn't constant ,it speeds up and slows , but doubtfull it could ever stop.
Besides o could never feed the parking meter long enough,some Vogon would be along soon enough to give a penalty ticket ,or recite Vogan poetry to me!


----------

