What if the World spun the other way?

Answer 1

What if? The sun, moon, and stars would rise in the west.

Any more questions?

Answer 2

No one seems to have brought up the fact that days would be about 8 minutes shorter on average, and as such there would be 367.25 or so days in a year (instead of 365.25).

Right now the sun "runs away" from the direction it appears to move in the sky in a manner of speaking. This is because the Earth is moving around the sun. If we spun the other way, it would "run towards" the direction it appeared to move in the sky, making it move through the sky more quickly during the course of the day. This would shorten the day and make for more days in the year.

Answer 3

Sorry to be so gloomy. It's all pretty hypothetical anyway. There are lots of other things of greater likelihood that are bound to happen to the Earth in the next hundred thousand years that would be more local, but still lethal.

Any scenario that includes such a catastrophy would have to presume the complete destruction of the biosphere as a given. The only survivors would be bacteria. The tidal forced exerted upon the Earth would be enough to raise the surface of the earth several miles or more, and the tidal energy would probably be enough in a close encounter to liquify large portions of the crust.

The polar ice caps would be melted by any change in the mean global temperature, and the changing wind patterns and tectonic activity would provide a more than adequate source of heating. After they melted, and the sea level rose by 30 feet, they would eventually reform when the Earth settled down to its new spin orientation assuming the temperature of the atmosphere returned to current levels. I don't really see that that would happen for many centuries afterwards because it takes time for the Earth to cool after such a cataclysmic change. Perhaps millions of years would be needed to quell the vulcanism that must surely result from such a realignment. The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere and the consequent Greenhouse Heating would probably stay with the Earth for millennia.

Answer 4

Well, you will need a really long sheet of paper to write all of this down...

Assuming the world spun the other way, you would be left handed instead of right handed.

You would feed cows milk and get grass in return.

You would have to pay banks to take your money.

Pencils...The little blob of pink rubber would do the writing and the little pointy black end would be the eraser.

Headlights on cars would be Red, and tail lights would be white.

Apples would not fall off of apple trees; they would float off into space on the wind.

Waves would not rise up out of the water. Instead, they would sink down into the water like deep gullies with white froth at the bottom.

And so forth... Okay?

Answer 5

The celestial sphere appears to rotate around the North Star in the northern hemisphere counterclockwise if you are looking North. If the Earth spun in the opposite direction, the celestial sphere would appear to rotate in the opposite direction. The Sun, Moon, planets, and stars would appear to set in the East and rise in the West. Additionally hurricane and pressure-based wind patterns would rotate in the opposite direction than they do today. Additionally, corriolis corrections for long range ballastics would have to be made for the opposite direction.

Answer 6

The sun, moon, and stars would rise in what we now call the west and set in what we now call the east.
But since we have defined "east" as where the sun rises, we would still say the sun, moon, and stars all rise in the east (it would just be the other side of the sky).
But if that is how the Earth always revolved, we wouldn't know any different.

Answer 7

It would make no difference. The sun would rise in the west and set in the east, but that'd be about it.

There is actually already one planet that rotates in the opposite direction from Earth and all the other planets in the solar system: Venus.

Answer 8

then the sun would rise in the west and set in the east. thats about all that would have been changed, other than the direction of tornadoes, hurricanes, water down the drain and so forth

Answer 9

we would start at the end of time and end at the begining of time,
if you left handed- you'll be right,
the sun, moon, and stars would rise from the west,
death starts before life,
tv would be looking at us,
and so on...

Answer 10

We`d walk backwards Eunice ! It`s a law of physics .