What would happen if the Earth stopped rotating? Can it really stop?

Written By رنا السيلاوي on 2021/01/12

This article was written originally in Arabic and is translated using a 3rd party automated service. ArabiaWeather is not responsible for any grammatical errors whatsoever.

Weather of Arabia - Every day we see the rising and setting of the sun in an orderly motion destined by God Almighty, and were it not for the Earth's rotation around itself, the scene would have changed completely. Can the Earth stop rotating? And what would happen if it really stopped?

 

Introduction to the Earth's rotation

The Earth’s rotation was not an ancient fact. We do not see the Earth revolving because we live on it, and we see the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars as if they revolve around the Earth. However, the Earth and all the planets have been in continuous rotation since the creation of the universe. The Earth revolves around its axis from the west. To the east, that is, counterclockwise, and the Earth began to rotate with the birth of the solar system from a nebula billions of years ago, and the nebula is a giant cloud of gas and dust, from which space bodies were formed, including the sun, Earth and other planets, and all these planets gained a kind of rotation Naturally, when the spherical shape of the sun and planets was completed, their speed of rotation increased, as happens with skaters or ice dancers during their rotation. When the skater combines his arms, his rotation speed increases.

 

What happens if the earth stops rotating?

Life on Earth depends mainly on the ability of the planet to rotate, but suppose that there is a force or some reason that suddenly stops the Earth from rotating, then everything on Earth will continue to rotate, including the atmosphere and oceans, because it will suffer from an inertia that prevents it from stopping suddenly , and thus would be a catastrophic event that would lead to the complete destruction of everything on Earth.

 

What if the earth gradually slowed down over several years and stopped rotating slowly, can you imagine what would happen?!

 

What would happen to the days and the Earth's temperature if the Earth stopped spinning?

The Earth rotates on its axis once every 24 hours, which is why we have 24 hours in a day, and the speed of the Earth's rotation at the equator is about 1670 km / h, which is slightly greater than the speed of sound, and if the Earth stops rotating on its axis, the day may last for a year Complete, and every place on Earth would receive six months of continuous sunlight, rather than alternate day and night during the day.

 

This will lead to heating half of the planet to extremely high temperatures (about 100 degrees Celsius), in which it is impossible for human life, while the other half will cool very cold due to the absence of the sun for six months, but life may continue in a narrow area between the hot and cold halves However, this region will slowly creep and change throughout the year as the Earth moves around the sun in its annual orbit.

 

How would the winds change if the Earth stopped spinning?

The surface temperature of the Earth will depend on location relative to latitude, so that the Earth is much hotter than it is now at the equator compared to the poles at which the sun's rays are more tilted and less efficient at heating the Earth. Atmospheric wind circulation, so that air travels from the equator to the poles instead of parallel to the equator wind systems as they are now.

 

What would happen to the seas and oceans if the Earth stopped spinning?

When the Earth rotates, a centrifugal force is generated. Over billions of years, this force has pushed the central region of the planet to be swollen, so the diameter of the Earth at the equator is about 21.4 km more than the diameter of the Earth at the poles, and this bulge in the solid Earth slowly developed over billions of years , because the response of the solid to the centrifugal force caused by the Earth's rotation is slow, but liquid water is more mobile, pushing the water to rise at the equator about 8 km more than if there was no rotation of the Earth.

 

But if the Earth slowly stops rotating, the oceans will gradually migrate towards the poles and move away from the equator, leading to the division of the Earth's oceans into two large polar oceans separated by dry land in the middle, and half of the world will be under water.

 

 

How would the Earth's magnetic field happen if the Earth stopped spinning?

The Earth's rotation is one of the factors that contributed to the formation of its magnetic field, through the effect of the Earth's movement on the formation of vortices in the liquid core of the Earth, which is rich in molten iron. With harmful charged particles, high-energy cosmic rays, the polar lights (aurora borealis) no longer visible, and the Van Allen radiation belts likely to disappear.

 

 

Can the Earth really stop spinning?

One of the guarantees that science offers is that the Earth will never stop spinning, because the rotation is part of the fabric of the universe, and even if the Earth’s oceans dried up over billions of years from now and the planet became a flaming rocky ball, the Earth would continue to spin, as it is known in physics that Rotating objects continue to rotate unless there is a change in energy, such as the object being subjected to so much friction that it can stop it, and while this happens easily with some tools and things like rotating heads, nothing in outer space is big enough to stop the Earth's rotation more than slowing it down by an amount Little.. this and God Almighty knows best

 

This article was written originally in Arabic and is translated using a 3rd party automated service. ArabiaWeather is not responsible for any grammatical errors whatsoever.


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