if earth's rotation about its axis slows to half?

Question

Theoretically, what would be the effects if earth's rotation about its axis slowed to half so that one day becomes 48 hours? Besides the impossibility of this, I'm interested in the effect on temperature worldwide, the oceans' ability to regulate and distribute heat, the effect on the moon if any, how plants would adapt/react, etc.

Answer 1

Days would be twice as long. You would weigh a tiny bit more. Plants would be bigger (as they are in Wassilla Alaska because of the longer daylight.) The Moon would be unaffected.

Answer 2

With the day becoming twice as long the temperature differential between night and day would become greater. With the dayside being in the sunlight for a full 24 hours (give or take) the days would be somewhat hotter, and the nights would be correspondingly colder. It would be most noticeable in deserts and other areas that already have great temperature swings between day and night. This would probably result in some climate changes, which I can't predict offhand. The climate changes and longer day would probably play merry hell on a lot of plants and animals.

Life would survive. Disruption of human civilization might be minimal or severe, depending on the climate changes that occur as a result.

Answer 3

Nne of those factors would alter the rotation of the earth (neither can be translation)
Due to the first law of Newton, any mass (the mass of the Earth included) will modify its speed in space, unless its perturbed by an external mechanical force....
Going back to the question, the rotation of the earth, has been slowing down (remember the book "History of Time by Stephen Hawkins) about 0 .00001 sec..every year, so, that this slowing effect of one millionth of a second every year, will slow the earths rotation, by one second every million years....Nothing to think much about.
Normal rotation cannot be modified by INTERNAL factors of the earth itself, like tidal waves, oceans as distributors of heath, moon etc, cannot influence the speed of rotation, because, all of them, except the moon (that acts as an "stabilizer") do not alter the total mass of the earth, and the newtons law, remains intact....
The only factor that coud alter not only the speed of translation around the sun, (5,000 kilometers per second), would be a modification by external force, such as a gigantic meteorite, (weighing several hudreds of tons), then a billiard ball effect could take place and alter both...
As long as that does not happen, everything will remain more or less the same, up to the second (quite literally)....

Answer 4

Well, if it were to slow to half speed, a lot of things would be going on for twice the length of time that they normally took before.

A day would be about 48 Hours long, so lots of work could be done in one day.

Nights would be twice as long, so they would probably get really cold.

Days would be twice as long, so they would get really hot.

All of the clocks on the Earth would have to be remanufactured with a new face and gear mechanism, or clock crystal.

Greenwich, England, would have major turmoil over how to redo GMT correctly.

Zillions of text books would have to be rewritten.

A lot of satellites would have to be serviced in space and set onto new orbits because they would be flying around way to fast.

Lots more stuff would be stolen, because the thieves would have more time to operate.

Answer 5

Temperature variations would be a lot higher, because of the 24h days and 24h nights. Therefore winds and currents, trying to compensate greater temperature differences, would be a lot stronger and destructive.

Also the differences between summer and winter would be much greater and increase with the latitude, for the same reason.

There would be no effect on the moon, I suppose, but the timing and strength of the tides in the oceans would be quite different.
...

Answer 6

No, it truly is double nonsense: a million. there is somewhat no uncommon planetary alignment going on in 2012. 2. The pull of all planets is adequate for inflicting a small wobble on earths axis on a daily basis, however the end result's periodic, it neutralizes itself over the years. The moon stabilizes Earths axis via tidal forces that are approximately 500 situations better than the end results of the different seven planets interior the image voltaic equipment, mutually.

Answer 7

Well, if it instantly switched, then we'd all die, since our momentum keeps us moving, and buildings and such would all crumble, most if not all would fall towards the east.Oceans and such would cause tsunamis and western coasts would be destroyed. This would not be a pretty sight :)

Hope that helped.

Answer 8

Since you know that it'as impossible, YOU CAN MAKE UP ANY ANSWER YOU WANT. iMAGINaTION IS a WONDERFUL THING.