Some mothers do 'ave 'em....

[Peter Ward]

I recently spoke to a fellow wanting some Astro software. Seems he was wanting to "check on some historic events".

Like this one: "as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day"

I mentioned there was probably some poetic license there, and there would be no software that would in fact account for planet earth spinning to an abrubt halt 'cos the Good book said it did...this was not appreciated...

Converstion ended pretty shortly after that ;)

That said, I mused over the earth's spin coming to an abrupt halt for a day....I 'd suggest even Hollywood would have difficulty in getting the special effects right for that disaster movie...

....but....as I'm curious....just what would happen???

[AstralTraveller]

Well, if it happened Monday to Friday while I'm at work I'd be furious!! But on weekends or during holidays it would be OK. :P

Being slightly more serious, what is it that suddenly stops?? Just the Earth's crust; the crust, mantle and core; the crust, mantle, core and oceans; or the crust, mantle, core, oceans and atmosphere. Depending on what magically stops and what keeps moving the disasters would be quite different.

[Jeffkop]

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:Oh thats precious

[lacad01]

Would everything not fixed to the ground float up and out or is that just cobblers ??
I just thought about it and it's dumb, please ignore :P

[Peter Ward]

Good question... I took the literal interpretation, the "earth" bits would have to stop (core, mantle crust). The angular momentum consequences on the oceans, atmosphere...anything that's not bolted down (spin velocity at the equator is around 900 knots)...would be interesting....

[Esseth]

Yeah i watched an episode of "The Universe" that did a bit on this exact issue.

The episode top 10 ways to destroy the earth ;) to give you some idea of how well it would go for us little humans.

[sheeny]

Maybe it was time that stood still for a day at midday...

:P

...maybe it was a calendar adjustment... "today's Monday and so's tomorrow"...

(apologies to Monty Python and the Life of Brian).:)

Al.

[sheeny]

...not to mention the heating of the sun facing side and cooling of the other side and the resultant winds that would be generated. Whacko weather systems no doubt...

Al.

[DavidTrap]

Al, I hope you're not trying to turn this into a thread on global warming!!! The moderators will be in her faster than you can say Flash Gordon!

DT

[Barrykgerdes]

The stories that are around about people trying to tie biblical stories into scientific fact are always amusing. However it is like all controversial subjects, the adherents will never be convinced so it is pointless to argue.

The probable reason is that English as a language has so many similar words describing different things that the wrong meaning is given.

This is exacerbated by the fact that most of ancient languages that the old stories are translated from never had words to describe what we accept as "gospel" and so wrong meanings are given for simple visual accounts.

I always use the story of Cinderella and the glass slipper to show this. The European versions of the story refer to the glace slipper which in fact means fur slipper. A much more comfortable piece of footware.

Barry

[ngcles]

Hi Peter & All,

Well, it shouldn't be too hard to work out the total angular momentum as we know the mass of the Earth and its rotational velocity.

Haven't done the maths myself (I'm lazy) but instantly converting virtually all that kinetic energy (an extremely big number) into heat (it's gotta go somewhere) I'd think would probably be enough to completely melt the Earth's crust if not the mantle as well -- which might be uncomfortable if you are a carbon-based life-form.


Best,

Les D

[astroron]

Keep it clean:P

[Starkler]

I remember my uncle trying to tell me if the earth stopped spinning that we would float off. Even as a kid I knew that was rubbish and in fact the spin is working against gravity, not for it.

[Waxing_Gibbous]

I've read several hypothetical papers on what might happen if the Earth suddenly stopped spinning. While there is much disagreement on the specific effects, there is also consensus on the cumulative: we'd be BONED!!!! :D

[Peter Ward]

I just need ot be a little careful here...my beef is not with any "theological" aspects of that person's world view.

Simply the physics of what would happen if mother earth suddenly stopped spinning. (BTW.... no, we would not "float off"....gravity will continue to work just fine)...as I said, interesting given the large numbers involved...

The kinetic rotational energy of the earth...about 2.14 x 10^26 Kilowatts per second ? (my math could be dodgy, but we are close) has to go somewhere.... eg melt rocks etc.

[supernova1965]

There was a movie called CORE where the core of the earth stopped spinning causing the Magnetic Field of the earth to stop with the resulting disaster of electrical storms and then the sun's full power would be unleashed on us if I am not mistaken:confused2: with no Magnetic Field.

[sheeny]

Nope. (Fingers making a crucifix). Staying away from that.;)

Al.

[sheeny]

The bit I always struggle with, Peter, in these sorts of questions is the mechanism that causes the effect. To stop the earth spinning there must be something to cause it, and that is probably something far more disasterous than the actual effects of simply not spinning. I think Les D is thinking a similar direction.

However, lets not spoil a good healthy speculative mental exercise with too much logic:);).

If the oceans and atmosphere didn't stop with the rest of the earth, well,,, synchronised tsunami's, Batman, was a mess!:lol:

If they did, well I reckon the differential heating between the two sides of the earth would have some wild weather. Extremely hot one side, and cold the other and big winds in between. Of course the coriolis component would be missing so cyclones and anti cyclones wouldn't form (I think;)). But then imagine the moon is still orbiting the earth...:D... tides would still be working.

However, if the moon stopped orbiting as well... oops...:P

Al.

[Barrykgerdes]

I seem to rember reading a story many years ago. I think it was called "When Worlds Collide". The essence of this story if I remember right was that Venus spun out of an orbit outside Earth's to its new position.

During its pass by earth it caused Earth to topple through 360 degrees so that the north became the south and then back to north again.

During this topple period if it happened within a few hours the sun would describe a retrograde (or circular) path for quite a few hours, if the Earth kept spinning in the same direction ,before continuing on its way. Thus to a person on earth (assuming he could survive the turmoil) it would appear that the sun stood relatively still for a period of time.

The more I think of it I think the passage from the bible in the first post is what inspired the story.

Barry

[OneOfOne]

Actually, the current issue of Sky & Tel (US) has an article along a similar vein of worlds colliding. They say that, whilst the orbits of the planets are quite stable at the moment, Mercury has a small possibilty of becoming eratic spinning out of the Sun's orbit....look out if it hits us on the way out. Also Mars could become unstable due to resonances with Jupiter and come hurtling in. They said that even if it missed the Earth, a very near miss would be sufficient to destroy the Earth. We can only predict the positions and orbits of the planets out to thousands of years, after that it is anyones guess due to chaos (butterfly) effects.

If you watch the Aussie version you will probably see this article published as they often repeat the best articles from their US counterpart.

[avandonk]

The Earth did not stop as in those days the Sun went around the Earth. The perfect crystal sphere that held the Sun would have stopped. The Sun being much smaller than the Earth would have had no trounble stopping and it would have only got a bit hotter. I just do not understand how people cannot see the obvious! The Earth did not have to stop as it was not moving! Anyway the turtles holding it up are very slow moving. They have to be otherwise the oceans would slosh around causing huge waves.

Bert

[Barrykgerdes]

Thanks Bert

I knew there must be a perfectly logical answer!

Barry

[Peter Ward]

Bert....No, No No...I think it's pretty obvious Nut was having a difficult birth of Ra that particular year..... :)

[Nightshift]

Well this is just my thoughts, no real science base on this hypothesis.

The sudden inertial impact would be (dare I say it) astronomical, I am guessing the entire crust surface (tektonic plates) of the earth would not withstand the sudden inertia and simply fly to pieces, mostly in the direction away from the core (space), so would all of the "bits" not associated with the land mass, water (oceans), trees, buildings, you, me. This would expose the mantle which would most likely follow the crust to a point where the gravitaional core would hold it back, we'd be left with a mess.

Even if this theory is total bunkum it would suffice to say that we would be experiencing a bad day.

Cheers, Dennis.

[JimmyH155]

There must be something in this, because our scientific friends have looked into neolithic fireplaces and found the Earth's magnetic field has flipped many times, and what about that Chinese game Mahjong (great game) . Traditionally in the game, East and West are switched around:)
Also, the Earth could still keep spinning the same way, but suppose it flipped over whilst spinning. Then the Sun would rise in the West:D:P

[JimmyH155]

Reminding me of books, there are two fascinating books by Professor Immanuel Veliscovsky called "Earth in upheaval" and another called "Worlds in collision".
His theory was that Mars had two close encounters with the Earth, and in one encounter - happening in mankind's memory - was fire streaming down from Mars to Earth. Where was this seen??? The Middle East:P
What was the fire??? Naptha - ie hydrocarbons:D:P
In biblical times too.
In his book Earth in upheaval, he describes how in many parts of the world, there are caves stuffed full of scrunched up bones of animals such as tiger, sheep, deer, lion - in the same cave. His theory was that humungus tidal waves have swept the Earth in the past. Caused by Mars and Venus.
Fascinating reading:D

[JimmyH155]

Re the above thread, in the 1950's, the American universities banned those two books, and threatened any publishers who dared publish them that they would never get an order from the universities again!! Poor old Velicovsky was muzzled for many years.:mad2:

[AstralTraveller]

Fascinating indeed. It seems he was never a professor and his professional training was in psychology. I suspect that some of his theories, such as the Earth begining as a satellite of a proto-Saturn which subsequently went nova causing Noah's flood, would raise a few eyebrows on this forum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velikovsky

BTW the word is 'tsunami' (it is both singular and plural, just like the word 'sheep'). The tidal wave is perfectly ordinary and causes two high tides and two low tides every day.

[avandonk]

Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy it is amazing that you even know about this misguided fool. It is very easy to calculate from celestial mechanics when or if it could have happened. The Moon was a result of just such a collision about four billion years ago! The evidence is not in the orbits but the isotopes present in both objects. The real proof is that the Earth has a far larger iron core than any other planet. With it's small size the Earth should not have a Moon as large as what we observe. I am still stunned that people will believe the most ridiculous claptrap and when their beliefs are challenged by empirical science they retire to the womb of their dogma!

Bert

[Peter Ward]

:lol: Sadly we even elect them....however..... I think the earthworm lobby should justifibly be upset by being compared to a certain Senator Fielding. :D

[snas]

When I first heard of planet x, I did a google search and ended up on the site of some crackpot university in the US where you could get a degree in such things as "high colonics" etc. If you don't know what high colonics are....well, this is not the forum. Just another crackpot theory.

Anyway, this mob was going on about planet x and 2012 and how, in 2012 the Earth's poles would shift and the Earth would suddenly stop rotating and go back the other way so the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east. They know this has happened before because of the geological evidence of changes in the Earth's polarity. How that translates to the Earth spinning in the opposite direction, I'm not sure.

Their advice re how to survive these catastrophes was that we should all move to higher ground so as to avoid the tidal waves that were sure to happen. No mention though of the earthquakes that would flatten the mountains that we had moved to in order to escape the tidal waves.

I wonder if people like this genuinely believe the rubbish they write, or are just knowingly espousing their rubbish in order to make a buck.
I'm going with most of them after the buck.

Still, we'll apparently get a definite answer to the question of what would happen if the Earth stopped rotating in 2012.

Stuart

[JimmyH155]

I didn't say I "believed" it, Bert, just that it was fascinating reading. That stuff was written 60 years ago, when we weren't so "clever" as we are now. Now we know everything dont we..........:P

[JimmyH155]

Please note..David, from World Book Dictionary
TSUNAMI :)Quote: an oceanic tidal wave caused by a submarine earthquake or volcanic eruption [Japanese tsu = harbour, + nami = wave]:P
Yes I did mean tidal wave - ie one tide brought millions of tonnes of trees (stripped from the rainforest) and dumped them - say - in a valley in Wales. The next tide delivered more trees, then silt, then dead animals.
Then under great weight, those trees turned into coal ;):P
Possible???
What caused these monster tides??? Good 'ol Mars HA HA:P

[Peter Ward]

I ran some back of the envelope calculations....assuming it take 38kw of energy to melt 1kg of rock, then converting the rotational energy of the earth into, say heating rocks, will allow you to melt:

563, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 kg of rock.

This is about 3 orders of magnitude more than you need to melt the entire lithosphere of the planet.

Bad hair day to be sure......

[AlexN]

As for what would happen..

Here's something we can all try next time we're down at the local Chinese restaurant.. Put a few bowls, cups, condiments etc on the lazy susan in the middle of the table, gently get the lazy susan spinning. Once you've got it to a moderate velocity, suddenly stop it, and watch the chaos that ensues.

In all seriousness, there was a doco on Discovery channel not too long ago that was outlining the top 10 ways to destroy the earth.. The typical stuff, sun exploding and incinerating us.. black holes encroaching upon us and increasing tidal forces pulling us to bits etc.. Number 2 was in fact, if the earth simply stopped rotating... They covered if it was just the crust that stopped rotating, or if it was crust, mantle and core. Apparently it would be worst if it was just the crust, or just the core, having said that, they said even if, somehow, the whole planet, atmosphere and all just stopped, the weather that would be brought about as a direct result would likely destroy half the planet... The rest of us would die due to the ecosystem breaking down..

Interesting to think about, if a bit morbid...

[ngcles]

Hi Peter & All,




Glad you did that Peter -- thanks. Good to know there's some energy left over to do a couple of other jobs.

Not all would be converted into heat, most would but not quite all. Of course one recipient of slice of the remainder would be the Moon -- bye-bye Moon.

Because the total angular momentum in the Earth-Moon system has to be conserved, some of the energy would be transferred to the orbital velocity of the Moon. The Earth's rotation is undergoing a nett braking at the moment of about a few 1,000,000ths of a second per day due to tidal acceleration. The main cause of tidal acceleration is the gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon and its effect on the oceans as they slosh around. As the Earth slows (painfully slowly) part of the Earth's "lost" angular momentum is transferred to the Moon (the rest is spent in heat) causing the Moon to speed up and move into a more distant orbit that takes longer to complete. The Moon currently recedes from the Earth at a rate of about 3.5cm/year due to this effect.

If the Earth stopped spinning instantly/near instantly -- bye bye Moon.

Perhaps before the rocks melted, all would be dead anyway because of the instant deceleration of our surroundings from about 1,600km/hr to nil. Those flying in aircraft might survive for a little longer perhaps unless the atmosphere stops dead too.

Then there is the small issue (on the east coast of Australia) of the tide going out rather quickly (to start with) and the oceans sloshing over/around the continents for weeks -- but that would come to an end pretty quick --they'd boil because the rocks below them are at 100s if not 1000s of deg C by now.

By comparison, the atmospheric "weather/climate" effects caused by instantly stopping the Earth's rotation are pretty small dice.

All-in-all not a nice scenario if, as I said, you are a carbon-based life-form.

Interesting ...


Best,

Les D

[Peter Ward]

The next time some nutter calles me up and says "the good book categorically states the earth stopped spinning for a day" and I need the software to check it....well...

:lol: What can I say? ....everyone knows political spin doesn't work with me...

[JimmyH155]

Never mind the statements about coal seams - how did they form? If you go into any old forest and stick your finger into the ground, you will come across just ordinary soil! So Velicoskvies theory of massive tidal waves sweeping huge masses of timber into a valley, or plain, makes sense. Millions of tonnes of timber into say 100 metre piles, eventually gets crushed down into a coal seam a few metres thick.Seems to make sense to me. Yet nobody gives him any credance for this theory - he is a nut case, isnt he? Not a proper professor. Laughed at by the American universities.
OK you clever cloggs out there::shrug: QUESTION: How did coal form? Cataclysmic events, or just the World spinning round for eons just the same?? Oh of course, like oil, it all disappeared into tectonic plates and re-appeared later as coal or ?? oil?:shrug:

[astroron]

I didn't say I "believed" it, Bert, just that it was fascinating reading. That stuff was written 60 years ago, when we weren't so "clever" as we are now. Now we know everything dont we..........http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/../vbiis/images/smilies/tongue05.gif








You are doing a good job in trying to convince us otherwise:shrug:

[mithrandir]

OK - I'll bite.



Forests are too dry and the timescale is far too short.

Ever seen a peat bog? Thousands of years of plants dieing and collapsing in an anaerobic environment. Dry it out and it burns. Peat fires are used to dry the barley used in producing scotch whisky. It adds a smokey taste.

Swamps lay down similar layers of plant material.

Continue for a few million years, and then bury under kilometers of rock for a few hundred million more years. Allow weathering to bring it back to near the surface.

"Instant" coal. Or oil.

I assume you are stirring the pot. No-one in their right mind believes that *stuff*.

[AstralTraveller]

Andrew,

Quite so.

Coal petrologists can tell a lot about the source of coal and its depth of burial from microscopic examination. While terrestial swamps can produce coal I believe most is layed down in shallow marine environments. Certainly most of the Australian east coast coal was layed down in brackish to marine pools or embayments in the delta of a massive river. The river itself was probably smaller than the Ganges of Amazon but it was getting up there. It certainly extended to present day Victoria but there is pretty good evidence that it stretched to Antartica -obviously before the rifting that created the Southern Ocean (this last claim is based on the chemical similarities of zircon crystals found in the Sydney Basin to some found in situ in Antartica).

The rank (degree of alteration of the original material) of the coal gives the burial depth (assuming you know the geothermal gradient). For Sydney Basin coals it turns out that they were burried about 1km deeper than they are now. That 1km of rock has eroded away as the basement of the basin has uplifted.

[AstralTraveller]

World Book Dictionary :rofl:

From Encyclopedia Britanica: ... also called a seismic sea wave or tidal wave ..... The term tidal wave is a misnomer, for the wave has no connection with the tides. (my emphasis)

Even Wiki has: Tsunami are sometimes referred to as tidal waves. In recent years, this term has fallen out of favor, especially in the scientific community, because tsunami actually have nothing to do with tides.