What would happen if the world spin the other way around?

Answer 1

Interesting question. What you are asking about is called "retrograde rotation", i.e. a rotation of a planet:

"nearly all bodies in the solar system revolve and rotate in the same counterclockwise direction as viewed from a position in space above Earth's North Pole. This common direction probably arose during the formation of the solar nebula. The relatively few objects with clockwise motions (e.g., the rotation of Venus, Uranus, and Pluto) are also described as retrograde."

Venus is particularly interesting in this regard, since is it practically the same size as Earth, and is our nearest planetary neighbour. If Venus could have a retrograde rotation, there is no apparent reason, then, why Earth couldn't have had retrograde motion.

How would things be if that were so? If all the other conditions were the same, then the direction of rotation should not make any significant difference. I don't know of any observable phenomena that are caused by the direction of a planet's rotation, other than the direction of prevailing weather and the apparent direction of the rising and setting of heavenly bodies. But that would all just be reversed; symmetrical with things now.

People have wondered about and made myths about directionality since the earliest times. An interesting myth can be found in Plato's dialogue "Statesman" also called "Politicus". In this myth, the whole cosmos turns one way under the reign of Cronus, and the opposite way under the reign of Zeus (the way it turns now). Under Cronos, people and things aged backwards; instead of decaying, they grew young and beautiful. Under Zeus, things go entropic. Of course if you take this myth to its logical conclusion then either (a) it is incoherent or (b) all causal relations, including thought and memory, are exactly the same as now and it doesn't really matter what direction time moves in.

Answer 2

Look at the earth from the other end of the solar-systems axis and it does. Sorry being flipant...

Science dictates it normally will not form a solar system that way, but I guess if some how there was a huge impact (like the moon) on earth and hit it in such a way as to change its rotational momentum, and by some unimaginable way diddn't kill us...
Um not alot, the Sun would rise in the west and the magnetic flux would be reversed. That means the north pole (ironically now a magnetic south) will become what the name surgests a magnetic north pole.

Oh forgot to add the science bit, the way accretion disc form due to a perculiarity of gravity always the same way, with the elemental distribution the same. Once this disc forms bands become there own accretion disc and make the sun and planets, all rotate the same way and in the plane of the original disk.

Answer 3

I LOVE this question and also love all the funny answers. (LOL.) The best and most accurate answer so far (before mine) is from "Artful Dodger." He is mostly correct...except for the following correction: We DO in fact know why Venus is literally Upside-down. (So its spinning the other way) A MASSIVE collision in its early years knocked it totally off it's axis. Planet formation theories clearly show, (mathematically) that all the planets would have started off with the same rotational direction and NO tilt on their axis. The massive impact theory also explains why Earth has a tilt on its axis. The same impact that created the moon is the most likely one. In the case of Venus it was hit by something so big it was flipped over on its head but no moon was formed. It probably all coalesced together to re-form Venus. -- Just to add one more interesting thing. The spin of Earth is slowing down. At the time of the Dinosaur extinction a day was 22 hours long on Earth. The Gravitational drag of the moon is doing it. The moon is also moving away slightly each year too.

Answer 4

The earth spins around to encounter the sun's gravitational force and does not fall into the sun due to centripetal force.If the earth were to stop spinning and to spin the other way around,the earth most likely will fall into the Sun before it can begin spinning around again.

Answer 5

Stopping the spin and restarting it would probably be disastrous. But if the Earth had always spun the other way, besides the Sun rising in the west and setting in the east, clocks would turn the other way (because they're descended from sundials).

Answer 6

you mean if it stopped the way it is spinning now and started spinning the opposite way?

I think I heard once that if the earth stopped spinning, even for a spilt second that everything on it would be sucked into outer space... whether or not that is true, I don't know.

Answer 7

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Answer 8

For a few seconds there would be no gravity, and if it was 11:00 in the morning (you wouldn't notice) but it would go to 10:59 , 58 , 57 etc.

Answer 9

Sun would come up in the west, the sun would go down in the east, and Jesus Christ would be very angry that we'd messed up the spin of one of his favorite planets

Answer 10

No differences of significant interest. The sun would rise in what we now call the west. The tides would repeat every 11 hours instead of every 13. That's about it.