Consequences of The Earth stopped spinning

 What would happen, If The Earth stopped Spinning

Earth is our home planet. It is the only known planet to have large amounts of water and the only planet where life is known to exist. It has wind that blows and seasons that change. Hypothetical questions are always really fun in science because they make us think about what we know in a different light, which can make us better understand the huge scale of our planet. So let's imagine, what happens if the Earth stopped spinning? Well, the good news is that if the Earth stopped spinning, we wouldn’t fall off. First of all we got to know about various interesting science and math concepts.

Laws of Motion

Before understanding this fact we should know Newton’s First Law of Motion. According to the first law which is also known as the law of inertia, if an object is at rest then it continues to stay at rest, or if it’s in motion it remains in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless an external and opposite force is applied to it. This behaviour is known as inertia. We all know that the Earth, the Sun and our entire solar system does not experience any external force. Therefore, all the planets keep spinning since their creation due to inertia. 

In this article, let us discuss in detail what would happen if Earth stopped spinning?. First of all, let’s imagine the rotation stops in one second. At the equator, it's like being in a car that was moving at 1,670 km's (1,038 miles) per hour and hitting the brakes. If you are in a building you’ll be thrown into the closest eastward wall and experience 47 times the gravitational acceleration of our planet. The good news is that this might not kill you. But everything else will. If the Earth suddenly stopped spinning, most of our planet would become very inhospitable. The Earth spins at a speed of almost 1700 km/h and a sudden stop of our planet would displace everything that’s not firmly fixed to the bedrock. This is due to the inertia of motion as explained previously. The reason for this is that, despite the spinning of Earth being stopped, the atmosphere will continue to be in motion with a speed of 1700 km/hr sweeping off everything in the ground like huge rocks, vehicles, buildings along with us.

The Earth might be still but everything else will continue to move at exactly the same speed the Earth was spinning before. This includes the atmosphere and all of the oceans. The winds alone would be four times faster and stronger than the fastest wind ever recorded (408 km/h 253 mph). And then you’ll experience a huge tsunami wave, which will destroy anything the winds didn’t. Due to this, the ecosystem on Earth will be wiped out completely. Along with it the 24-hour ‘system’ which we divide existence into, would be altered. A day that is equal to 24 hours now will become 6 months. Thus, there will be 6 months of daytime and 6 months of night time. In the daytime, the side of the Earth-facing the Sun will experience fiery summers, while the side facing away from the Sun would face deadly winters. This will result in giant storms that would rage for ages.

The extent of the damage will obviously be more devastating the closer you are to the equator but in the long run, being near the poles won't save you either. Due to its rotation, the Earth bulges in the middle, so the poles are about 21 km's (13 miles) closer to the centre of the Earth than the equator. Without the rotation, the oceans will migrate towards the poles – where the gravity is strongest , creating, respectively, devastating Earthquakes, one very large mega continent across the equator, and two separate oceans. If you had more time you wouldn’t have to worry about actually slowing down the planet, the Earth is already slowing down on its own. 

A non-rotating Earth will not have a magnetic field, as the liquid core of our planet would also be stationary. Without the magnetic field, the few living creatures that could have survived such cataclysmic changes would eventually succumb to the radiation. According to Witold Fraczek from the mapping and analytic company Esri, the North Ocean will host most of Europe and Russia underwater. Greenland and all of Canada will be submerged as well as Chicago, Seattle and Boston. New York will still be near the ocean, just in a different direction. In the Southern Hemisphere, the ocean will have covered huge chunks of Argentina, Chile and New Zealand, as well as the whole Antarctic continent. So if your super villain plan is to slow down the rotation of the Earth, the best place to be is at the North Pole on a well-equipped floating mobile base. The location would certainly be an advantage. The Earth would experience a "day" every year, so by going around it would be possible to simulate a regular day/night cycle. But things won't be too rosy in the long run. 

Now, this was just a hypothetical scenario and you can rest assured that this is not going to happen, at least not for a few billion years. In the last century, the length of the average day has increased of 1.7 milliseconds. The long-term trend is due to tidal effects between the Earth and the Moon but the length of the day also fluctuates due to other effects. At this rate, it would take 18.5 billion years for the Earth to have a day as long as a year. To know the answer to this question, what if the earth stopped spinning, see the video below.