If the world's rotation slowed down, how would that effect the planet??

Question

And in the same thought, if the rotation was faster, how would that effect the animals, plant life, gravity, etc??

Goring - You hit the nail on the head. That is why I asked this.

Answer 1

Actually, we *are* slowing down. Back when the moon was first created, the Earth's rotation was about 10.5 hours; slowly, over time, our day has gotten longer & longer, until the 24 hour period we see today... as a result of our slowing, and losing rotational energy, it's been transferred to the moon - and it's distance to Earth is slowly lengthening every day. Eventually, if the sun were to last that long, Earth's day would equal the moon's orbital period, an estimated 32 days, when *all* the Earth's rotational energy were drained & added to the moon's kinetic energy.

Answer 2

Even if you slowed it down to nothing, gravity would become only slightly higher (and no higher at all right at the poles). Similarly, you would have to speed it up a LOT before the gravity became significantly less around the equator. No, the main effects would be in terms of the day/night cycle. If the Earth's rotation was chaned siginficantly, many species of plants and animals that depend on that cycle being at or close to the time it is would die, from cold or starvation or thirst or who knows what; more would die as you increased the difference between the current rotation and the new rotation. The effects of this mass extinction would percolate throughout the ecosystem, and would certainly affect us humans as well as just about everything else.

Of course, this is assuming that you slow everything down or speed everything up at once. If you just slowed down or sped up the Earth without doing the same for the things resting on its surface, then just about everything that wasn't right near the poles would be blasted around by the sudden movement of the ground under their feet, and it would probably mark an even greater mass extinction than that mentioned above, and quite possibly the end of the human race (only people right near the poles or in high-altitude airplanes would survive, and they would then have to repopulate the entire human civilization themselves).

Answer 3

The only change would be the length of the day and night. The orbit and year would remain identical. The Earth's gravity would remain the same and since the centrifugal force of it's rotation is almost nil there would be no perceptible difference (unless it was spinning ridiculously fast).

Answer 4

Over the Thousands of year ,the Earth Spin did in fact slow down.It will slow down even more as the Earth's mass increases along with velocity changes.
How did the slow down (lenghtening of days)affected aging on biological life has not been excatly determined.

Answer 5

If it is slows down the centrifugal force (mv2/r)will be reduced and the planet will be attractedtowards the centre of the orbit ie: the SUN.
In the same way if the rotatio is speeded up the centrifugal force of the earth and its contents will be increased . This will affect their weight ie: reduced

Answer 6

if it slows down,the angular momentum of the earth would decrease and we would collapse into the sun as we would no longer be able to remain in our position in orbit.

Answer 7

fall off