Some mothers do 'ave 'em....

[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]

Originally Posted by 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

Thanks Bert

I knew there must be a perfectly logical answer!

Barry

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by avandonk

.....The perfect crystal sphere that held the Sun would have stopped. .....
Bert

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

[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
What was the fire??? Naptha - ie hydrocarbons
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

[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.

[AstralTraveller (David)]

Originally Posted by JimmyH155

Reminding me of books, there are two fascinating books by Professor Immanuel Veliscovsky called "Earth in upheaval" and another called "Worlds in collision".
......
Fascinating reading

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]

Originally Posted by avandonk

..... 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

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

[snas (Stuart)]

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..........

[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]
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
Possible???
What caused these monster tides??? Good 'ol Mars HA HA

[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,

Originally Posted by 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......

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]

Originally Posted by 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. ...

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...

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: 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?

[astroron (Ron)]

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/....s/tongue05.gif

Originally Posted by 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: 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?

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

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

OK - I'll bite.

Originally Posted by 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!

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.

So Velicoskvies theory of massive tidal waves sweeping huge masses of timber into a valley, or plain, makes sense.

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