if the world spin is slowing down by about 1 sec per year how fast was it spinning for dinosaurs?

Question

if it wasn't going really fast then what slows us down or speeds us up? shouldn't the earth have stopped by now?

Answer 1

Hello, I can't help but say that this is a stupid quetsion, because you forgot to think logically. Dinosaurs lived on average 100 million years ago. If you take one second per year, then 100 million seconds are about 2 years !!!
Of course the spin is slowing down, but by a far lower rate, maybe something about 2 x 10^ -6 secs per year or so ... That is a somewhat realistic figure. If it would be so, then a day in the early childhood of earth might have been about 4 or 5 hours shorter. But as soon as the moon was "established" the rotation became quite regularly. So by the times of dinosauers, who roamed the earth for an incredible amount of about 200 million years, the earth's spin was already as slow as it is nowadays, maybe just 1 or 2 seconds faster ... so to speak, it's not worth talking about it.
In general the slowing of the earth's rotation is caused by the tidal movement ... and that is caused by the gravity of the moon.
However, until the earth might stop moving, mankoind will probably not exist any more, or, if at all, live on other star systems as well.

Answer 2

The day was only about 22 hours long 650 million years ago according to the wikipedia source.

And from the US Naval Observatory source comes this:

Confusion sometimes arises over the misconception that the occasional insertion of leap seconds every few years indicates that the Earth should stop rotating within a few millennia. The confusion arises because some mistake leap seconds as a measure of the rate at which the Earth is slowing. The one-second increments are, however, indications of the accumulated difference in time between the two systems. As an example, the situation is similar to what would happen if a person owned a watch that lost two seconds per day. If it were set to a perfect clock today, the watch would be found to be slow by two seconds tomorrow. At the end of a month, the watch will be roughly a minute in error (thirty days of the two second error accumulated each day). The person would then find it convenient to reset the watch by one minute to have the correct time again.

This scenario is analogous to that encountered with the leap second. The difference is that instead of resetting the clock that is running slow, we choose to adjust the clock that is keeping a uniform, precise time. The reason for this is that we can change the time of an atomic clock while it is not possible to alter the Earth's rotational speed to match the atomic clocks. Currently the Earth runs slow at roughly 2 milliseconds per day. After 500 days, the difference between the Earth rotation time and the atomic time would be one second. Instead of allowing this to happen a leap second is inserted to bring the two times closer together.

Answer 3

Well let's see, there are about 32 million seconds in a year and the dinosaurs lived 65 million years ago, so at a rate of slowing of 1 second per year, their day was about 24 hours long, too, but the Earth was spinning in the other direction! Hmm, do ya think there's a flaw in your assumptions?

Answer 4

There is no way the earth spin is slowing down by 1 sec a year. Where on earth did you hear that?

Answer 5

The day was definitely shorter. There are pages on Wikipedia that deals with orbital rotation, but you need a degree in science to understand it the following is an extract from the scientific explanation:

"Tidal rhythmites are alternating layers of sand and silt laid down offshore from estuaries having great tidal flows. Daily, monthly and seasonal cycles can be found in the deposits. This geological record shows that 620 million years ago the day was 21.9±0.4 hours, and there were 13.1±0.1 synodic months/year and 400±7 solar days/year."

The first animals first appeared around 250 million years ago, so their day was shorter by about an hour and a half or thereabout.

Answer 6

A lack of spinning would not inhibit the Earth's orbit around the sun. We'd literally experience an end of days, but certainly not an end of years or seasons.

Answer 7

The day was around 20/22 hours long.

Answer 8

the rate in which earth is slowing down is far less than 1sec./year

Answer 9

to answer your question without the scientific gobblety-**** ... the world was spinning FASTER! (sorry couldnt help myself)