If Earth stopped rotating, it would cause catastrophic winds, massive tsunamis as oceans reshaped, extreme temperatures with 6 months of day/night, and the loss of our protective magnetic field, leading to lethal radiation, ultimately ending most life, though some might survive underground or near the poles. A sudden stop would fling everything eastward at high speeds, while a gradual stop would allow gradual, but still deadly, climate shifts, reshaping continents and creating a single equatorial landmass with polar oceans.
If Earth suddenly stopped spinning, it would be catastrophic. Almost everyone and everything not attached to the planet would continue to move at the current speed of Earth's rotation, around 1,000 mph (1,600 km/h) at its fastest, which is along the equator.
Earth spins at about 1,000 miles per hour at the equator. If that spin suddenly stopped, everything on Earth would be affected. People, cars, buildings, oceans, even air, would keep moving at that speed. It would feel like a massive shockwave.
Normally on Earth your measured weight is W = mg - m omega2 r = m g (1 - omega2 r/g). So due to the Earth spinning at the equator you weigh about omega2 r/g ~ 3 x 10-3 less (that is about 0.3% less) than you would at the poles (which is how much you'd weigh if the Earth stopped spinning).
1 hour on Earth can equal 7 years in space (or vice versa) due to time dilation, a concept from Einstein's relativity where strong gravity or extreme speeds slow down time relative to an outside observer, famously depicted in the movie Interstellar on a planet near a black hole where an hour for the crew meant years passing on Earth. It's not about speed alone in orbit (ISS astronauts age slightly slower), but about proximity to immense mass, like a black hole, bending spacetime so drastically that time crawls for those nearby compared to time far away.
Our graph up there shows that humans can easily deal with 2 gs for a matter of minutes, but in the long term, if the body doesn't adjust, you may see some serious problems such as loss of consciousness and hypoxia in the brain and upper tissues, as well as swelling and bruising in the feet and legs.
We don't feel it because everything spins together, a motion that has lasted for 4.5 billion years. NASA says there's almost no chance Earth will stop spinning in the next few billion years.
A day is the time period of a full rotation of the Earth with respect to the Sun. On average, this is 24 hours (86,400 seconds). As a day passes at a given location it experiences morning, afternoon, evening, and night. This daily cycle drives circadian rhythms in many organisms, which are vital to many life processes.
If our planet stopped spinning, it would gradually assume a more spherical shape and gravity would be the same everywhere apart from local variations due to Earth's non-uniform geology and topology. However, if it were stationary, the effects on the force of gravity would be the least of your worries.
Even a small move closer to the sun could have a huge impact. That's because warming would cause glaciers to melt, raising sea levels and flooding most of the planet. Without land to absorb some of the sun's heat, temperatures on Earth would continue to rise.
the Earth's rotation speed is approximately 1,670 km/h at the equator, but it decreases with latitude, becoming zero at the poles.
The net result of these dynamic adjustments is that the earth is slowly becoming more and more like a sphere. However, it will take billions of years before the earth stops spinning, and the gravitational equipotential creates a mean sea level that is a perfect sphere.
But in all likelihood, the Earth will not see this time, having been engulfed by the Sun in its red giant phase, around 7.6 billion years from now. In short, the Earth will not stop spinning, at least, not before it becomes a tiny part of our dying star.
It would take almost 12 days for a million seconds to elapse and 31.7 years for a billion seconds. Therefore, a trillion seconds would amount to no less than 31,709.8 years.
Clocks may have to skip a second — called a "negative leap second" — around 2029, a study in the journal Nature said Wednesday. "This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal," said study lead author Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.
Who decided on these time divisions? THE DIVISION of the hour into 60 minutes and of the minute into 60 seconds comes from the Babylonians who used a sexagesimal (counting in 60s) system for mathematics and astronomy. They derived their number system from the Sumerians who were using it as early as 3500 BC.
On April 13, 2029 (which happens to be Friday the 13th), something unsettling will happen. A decent-sized asteroid, the 1,100-foot-wide Apophis, will pass so close to Earth it'll be visible in the sky from certain places. Crucially, the giant rock will not strike our humble planet.
A 300m-wide asteroid will not hit the Earth in 2036, US astronomers say. It was thought there was a one-in-200,000 chance that it could strike on 13 April 2036, but revised calculations have now ruled this out. Instead, Nasa scientists said it would not get closer than 31,000km as it flies past on this date.
Notably, a substantial proportion of astronauts (86%) have reported back and neck pain during the initial days of microgravity exposure, and a similar rate reported using anti-inflammatory drugs to relieve pain post-flight.
The Martian environment poses special challenges to prospective Red Planet parents and their offspring. The effects of solar and cosmic ray radiation, reduced gravity, exposure to environmental toxins, even disrupted circadian rhythm can potentially impact parents and progeny alike.
Did you know that if gravity were slightly more powerful, the universe would collapse into a ball? Also, if gravity were slightly less powerful, the universe would fly apart and there would be no stars or planets. It's just that gravity is precisely as strong as it needs to be.