Why and how do planets spin, and what would happen if they stopped?

Answer 1

although i aggree with tom i beleive that spinning is a very very old phenomenon. galaxies spin planets and solar systems spin. i think that after the big bang when all of this conenctated mass was delivered to the universe planets begun to form by attracting pieces. coming to the concept orf orbiting when the new pieces start attaching to the newly formed planets the promoted this spining effect. on the other hane thare is not uniform distribution on the palnets and as the move in their orbits it is impossible to keep a zero angular velocity, this is easy to understand with a ball.

now imagine a helicopter. the helics rotates and it lifts up the helicopter. what does the rear helics do. it keeps the body of the helicopter from rotating the opposite way due to angular momentum conservation theory. now if you have a lot of haevy and fast orbiting bodies around you what you you do?
you would rotate yourself as well!!!

then inertia took place.

Answer 2

Tom pretty much got the how right. So i'll anwser part two.

A LOT of things would be different on a planet with no spin. too many to list them all so I'll pick a few. On earth some of them would be good and some very bad. without spin we would no longer have hurricanes, just big disorganized storms. Thats a good thing. bad thing is it would increase the drag on the iron core of the earth and possible causing it to stop like in the movie The Core. That would cause the earth magnetic field to stop and we'd be bombarded by radiation. it might take a few thousand years tho. The gravitational tug of the moon would probably get us spinnig again very slowly eventually. The days would all be very long and the so would the nights (roughtly 6 months for each). most plant life would die on the dark side. bad thing.

as for the why, well it's DAMN hard to get anything to be completely motionless especaily with all the forces acting on it. So it's likely that EVERYTHING spins one way opr another but Tom scenario explains why almost everything in the solar system spins the same way.

Answer 3

The planets spin because the gaseous collections that originally formed around the sun in the distant past, contracted under gravity and when anything that is not solid will spin when contracting, (I think!)
As to what would happen if they stopped spinning, well, the Planet would eventually show the same "face" to the Sun, as the moon does to us. I suspect it would then become somewhat egg shaped as the Sun's gravity would excert a pull aways in the same place.

Answer 4

Let me answer the last part...


If the Earth stopped spinning, we would not "...fly off into space..." as others so colorfully put it. Earth has a certain amount of mass. One of the properties of mass is gravity. If it were to suddenly 'stop', the loose things on the Earth's surface will slide around for a while, and eventually stop, but the mass of the Earth hasn't changed. The same energy (in the form of gravity) will still be here. So, you will not "...fly off into space...", but you will slide around on it's surface until the energy imparted into you from it's rotation is dissipated in the various pieces of skin, muscle and bone left behind you . Also, if the world was to stop, one side would get hot due to constant exposure to the Sun, and one side will freeze due to it's constant exposure to space. Now if ALL rotaional motion about it's axis is terminated, then the day would be EXACTLY as long as it's year. For example, look at our moon. It's day is EXACTLY as long as it's year. That is why we only see one side of it, just as the 'farside' is facing us, it's in the shadow of the sun, so we don't see it. It's still there, and if we had a flashlight powerful enough to shine onto it as it is in it's 'New' phase, we'd see the craters, plaines, etc. on the 'farside' just as we see the 'nearside'. This means the Moon constantly faces the same side toward Earth, even though the Moon does get sunlight when the 'farside' is away from us. We are the moon's 'Sun'. The Earth will be EXACTLY the same. We will always face one side toward the sun (baking it, boiling seas, etc) while the other side constantly faced space, (-300 degrees, frozen seas, etc.) There would be a very thin zone of habitability at the terminator, (the transition between night and day) but it would be very thin indeed. And the plants wouldn't grow, because the sunlight wouldn't be strong enough in the twilight/dawn to grow anything to eat. This would also imbalance the Earth, as most of the boiled off seas will migrate to the cold side, (due to the Law of Thermodynamics) where it will promply freeze and build up, and therefore just about all of the mass on the surface that isn't acutally attached to the surface, like oceans, etc., will end up on the cold side. Making the Earth more massive on one side, shifting the pull of gravity, (more mass over 'there') and causing the Earth's surface to spin the most massive side toward the sun, due to the sun's gravity pulling on the more massive side, causing the ice to melt, boil and migrate to the cold side, and the process starts all over again. Come to think of it, maybe some form of that process caused the Earth and planets to spin in the first place.


Hmmmmmmmm....

Answer 5

I have no clue!!! But, since I didn't see any answers.. I'll try to take a reasonable stab at guessing: *GriN*

Imagine matter orbiting the Sun like in the rings of Saturn...

now some of that matter gravitates together to form a small planet ...

now imagine that planet attracting more matter from nearby.. below it in orbit and outside of it in orbit...

as the matter is drawn in, what happens to the angular momentum it contains from orbiting? the energy is added to that of the planet...

Since matter drawn in from outside the orbit has more energy and it is moving to a lower orbit, it will speed up and it will give the planet more rotational energy when it impacts...

those that impact from lower orbits that are drawn into the new planet will be slowing down before they impact because they are moving to a larger orbit and so they will not impart as much energy to the planet upon impact...

I'll just guess that the mass orbiting the Sun is traveling in a counter-clockwise motion when viewed from the north pole...

since the new planet's outter side will be gaining angular momentum faster than the inward side, the planet would begin to spin counter-clockwise also....

similar to water going down a drain in the Northern Hemisphere...

sound reasonable? *GriN*

If a planet stopped spinning... all of the people and everything else not nailed down tight on the surface would go flying off because they would still have angular momentum.

lets see... hmmm.. one rotation in 24 hours.. or 24000 miles in 24 hours.. is 24000/24 = 1000 m/hr... and the planet is going to just stop? hahahahaahahahaaa!

Answer 6

I have never cut one open so I couldn't say with any authority but lets start here after we have removed a section.
We will do it together shall we?

First what do we know about them and what do they have in common?
Well I guess its their star or sun.
So there is a gravitational pull, a force.
Let's look at our imagined section.
Outside its contours are undulating and irregular,
Inside its pretty much the same except it is all irregular due to the semi liquid parts building up on its inner surface.
Think about it.
Its a three dimension water wheel turned outside in?
I reckon we are almost there now, all we need is a prime mover. Well we have its sun for starters and that's swinging it round like a ball on a piece of string.
Secondly we have its fluid content dashing around with it, but unable to escape from its varying inner contours.
That's it. It's turning.
There is no other way to release the energy or at least not until it looses its gravitational pull of its sun. Then its away looking for a black star.

Thanks fellas. Who would have guessed it?

Answer 7

All objects in the universe rotates. WHy No one has come up with an explanation. May be it is a property of mass.

If earth stops spinning there will be no day and night. Hence it will make vast area of the earth unlivable. So may will die of starvation , cold and hot weather etc

Answer 8

planets spin is due to the magnetic force of the north, south poles. it spins clockwise because the relation of north pole to south. a good example is a simple motor where the magnet causes the rotor to spin clockwise.
if it were to stop(impossible) then oearth will be doomed, tides will be desrupted, light and day, temperatures

Answer 9

Magnetic forces pull and repell us resulting in a spinning motion . Gradually they will slow down as the suns energy dips we will fall further and furtherfrom the sun resulting in severe climate change bringing an end to civilisation as we know it today. Dont wory you will be long gone when this happens.

Take care.

Does anyone know what matter is

Answer 10

planets spin because of the forces exist between them and the big sun. they ll never stop unless the forces disappear and they ll collide with each other