What would happen to gravity if the earth's rotation slowed down?

Question

What if, due to some electromagnetic interference, the earth's rotation decreased? It is obvious that there would be more hours in the day, but I always assumed that there is a certain amount of centrifugal force that affects gravity. It the earth's rotation decreased, then there would be less centrifugal force, which means gravity would increase, right? How weird would that be? How would we adapt to the increased weight? Would the affect be so dramatic that it could kill any of us?

Answer 1

Gravity and the rotation of the earth are only dimly related
The Earth began to spin because of conservation of angular moment as the particles that made up the earth drew together from gravity.

If the earth could slow down and stop with out damaging anything there still would be gravity

Gravity is a function of mass

More mass more gravity

Spinning of the earth does not affect its gravity. Though the weather patterns, currents and tides would really be screwed up.

Answer 2

As others have said, the difference would be small. Gravity wouldn't change.
Want to know how much effect centrifugal force has? Compare your weight at the equator and at the poles. People who live near the equator (where centrifugal force is the greatest), have been to the poles (where the should be no centrifugal force from the earth's rotation) and survived. None have reported feeling heavier.

Answer 3

While the spin of the earth has nothing to do with gravity, the centrifugal force of the spinning earth does counteract that. Probably to a VERY SMALL degree. Therefore if the speed of rotation of the earth slowed, there would probably be no noticeable difference in the force of gravity. Just an educated guess though.

Answer 4

The effect of centrifugal force is actually rather small compared to gravity. For the most part, people wouldn't be able to "feel" the difference.

The largest changes would be the effects on weather. First, you would have longer days and nights which would lead to a greater range of temperatures over the course of the day.

Also, the coriolis force results from the rotation of the Earth. Changing the rate of Earth's rotation would have profound effects on Earth's wind belts (trade winds, prevailing westerlies, polar easterlies if I remember correctly,) which could possibly have an effect on general circulation and cause some major climate changes.

Answer 5

If the earth stopped suddenly, you would float up into the clouds.

The earth would lose its mass too and slowly drift apart.

The laws of physics would be thus ignored in this final death of our planet.

The moon rotates very slowly, and when it stops, which will be before the earths rotation stops, it will fall apart and all the parts of the moon would come down and annihilate us.

Again, the universal laws of physics would be ignored.

Have you ever noticed why there is so much sand at the beach? Its because of all the rocks that are no longer rotating.

As far as your question, it rotates once every 24 hours, at the speed of 11 miles a minute. If the earth stopped, because the circumference is large enough that the increase in weight would only be slight. However, on the side facing the sun, in a few days you'd be dead. On the dark side you'd be dead too. On the area's where it is "dusk" the last remaining humans would be huddled together eating the last of the Big Macs wondering what in the hell they are going to do without daytime television.

Peace

Jim

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Answer 6

Actually, Earth's rotation *is* slowing down. Slowly, each year, our day is getting slightly longer.

While there is some centrifugal force from being close to the equator, it's not enough to really notice. It would be like standing on the North or South Pole - two places devoid of the effect.

Answer 7

Centrifugal force is greatest at the equator and zero at the poles. Even at the equator it is very small, less than 1% of gravity. So even stopping completely would have no important effect on the weight of things on Earth.

Answer 8

For one it couldn't happen by electromagnetic interference. The Earth is not a remote controlled spin top.

Centripetal acceleration is tiny in comparison with gravity. No big deal. You wouldn't even notice.

However, you might notice the absence of Coriolis forces leading to unstable cyclones in the Southern and Northern hemisphere and possibly even more chaotic weather and a different climate.

Answer 9

The spin of the earth has nothing to do with gravity. The size of the earth does.

Answer 10

Gravity is determied by the mass of the Earth, not its rotation.