Literally, what would happen if the world stopped spinning?

Question

If for some reason the world stopped spnning on it's axis, what would happen? Would we all die, if so how? Would we lose gravity but still be able to live? Does any scientist out there know? Any guesses people?Cheers

Answer 1

When the earth rotates, it not just allows the day and the night to take place on all over its surface, but also change on temperature, nature accommodation, animal and human behavior. Light and darkness are conditions that physiologically talking, will affect the sleep cycle, and its absence will create mood changes in animals and humans; however, we would be about to adapt in such cases. The translation forces will create a longer day, and a longer night... way longer in time than 24hrs, which would create changes in temperature, creating areas with very, very cool degrees, to other hot environments in contrast. The nature would change: plants-trees, animals would die. Farms would be dry, and people would be migrating all the time, just looking for better places to survive, where food would be available. It seems that starvation could kill millions. Just those ready to adapt would survive.

Answer 2

Nothing would happen. The world is already slowing down, due to the gravity of the moon. Every day is longer, because the moon pulls the oceans and creates tides, and that work makes the earth spin more slowly. Eventually, the earth will take a month to go from light to dark and back (a day takes a month).

Before that happens, however, the sun is increasingly hot and will evaporate the oceans and fry the earth and moon. The sun's heat has nothing to do with the earth spinning or not. See the link below :) and wear sunblock!

Oh! and all these people talking about flying off the earth or failure of gravity have no clue! Gravity also has absolutely nothing to do with spinning.

Answer 3

Well, if every survived the initial stop from 1000 mph to 0 mph, we'd see a very different planet. Assuming the Earth kept orbiting the sun, our day would be lengthened to the time it takes for the Earth to orbit the sun fully: one year. People living on different places on Earth would see different things as the sun moved across the sky, depending on what time of year it was when the Earth stopped spinning. A person on Earth would probably have only the choice between a very hot and a very cold place to live.

Gravity would not cease. Gravity has nothing to do with the rotation of the Earth.

If the Earth's core stopped spinning too, it's likely the planet would lose its magnetic field, and we'd probably all be toast to solar winds and cosmic radiation pretty quickly.

Answer 4

Everything on the surface would be thrown off into space at 1042 miles-per-hour, the speed at which our planet spins on its axis, because of inertia. Such a sudden stop for anything as large as Earth that is moving so rapidly would generate awesome forces. Most of it would melt. Some say there'd be no more gravity, but they are wrong. It's Earth's mass, not its rotation, that causes gravity, as Einstein told us. How would we die? The vacuum of space would cause us to explode when internal pressure became greater than our bodies could bear. That'd happen before we suffocated from lack of oxygen or burned from the melting Earth, because we'd be moving so rapidly. Does this make you have any thoughts about the truth of the Bible tale of Joshua at Jericho?

Answer 5

If it happened all at once, anything not very well anchored would be thrown to the East at around 1000 miles per hour. Gravity is not caused by the rotation of the Earth; it's a direct result of the mass of the Earth, so we would still have gravity. I believe that we would all die. This, however, will never happen without some kind of catastrophic asteroid or comet collision, which would kill us all anyway. The inertia of the Earth's rotation is too great a force to be stopped suddenly by anything else.

Answer 6

the first thing that would happen is the failure of gravity. gravity is created by the inertia of the earths core as it spins. if we stopped spinning, no more gravity. since the earth would still have a little bit of inertia as it slowed down, most of us along with buildings, plants and animals would be hurled into space since gravity would not hold us done anymore. those who survived would either be cooked by the sun or frozen to death by the lack of sun (the sun would still be there, but it would not cool or heat the earth as that depends strongly on the earth's rotations.) from there, all life would eventually be wiped out either by the slowly deteriorating atmosphere (which no longer has an oxygen supply now that plant life is gone) or by the extreme temperatures.

Answer 7

Gravity IS NOT caused by the rotation of the earth. Gravity is a force dependent solely on mass and distance between objects, not on motion of the objects. The rotation of the earth's core does, however, produce our magnetic field. What the magnetic field does is it protect us from the solar wind, which is a stream of highly charged, highly energetic particles emanating from the sun. Without the protection of the magnetic field, Earth would be as lifeless as Mars.

Answer 8

If it stopped spinning around its own axis, the sun would always shine on the one side of the Earth. If it stopped spinning around the Sun, I guess it would head out into space.

Answer 9

GRAVITY OF THE EARTH IS BECAUSE OF ITS MASS. IT WONT BECOME ZERO JUST BECAUSE IT STOPS SPINNING. IT WILL INFACT INCREASE A BIT. i donno why so many people have got the concept of gravity wrong, guess u guys and girls out there are still in pre-school....nothing will change if earth stops spinning, only that, one half will be in darkness and other will have daytime always..

Answer 10

no guesses just the facts... well if the earth stors spinning first half the world will be in eternal darkness and half with too much sun.. second half will freeze to death with no natural sun and the other half will burn to death...