What if the Earth Stopped Spinning

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Speaker 1: Hey, orr, Hey, do you ever think about how fast you're spinning? Oh? Man, the way this year is going, I feel like by head spinning, that's for sure. Well, there's that, but there's also how the Earth is spinning around its axes, how we're all spinning around the Sun, and how our entire solar system is spinning around the center of the galaxy. Are you gonna spin as a tail about the physics of spin today, Daniel, I just think it's cool how everything in the universe seems to be spinning all the time. See, I knew you put a positive spin on it. Hi. I am or handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD mix. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I can spin up or I can spin down. Does that officially make you a spin doctor? You are a doctor and you sometimes do research quantum spin, so technically you do belong in a nineties band with a one hit wonder. Yeah. I don't know what's more believable, quantum spin or political spin. Sometimes it all seems made up. It's all um not not true, kind of true and not true at the same time. But welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explained the Universe a production of Our Heart Radio in which we examine all the amazing things about the universe. We spin them up, we spin them down, we turn them around in your head until they make sense to you. We think that wondering about the universe belongs to everybody, that your curiosity is the thing that drives science as much as the curiosity of scientists themselves. And so we take a journey all around the universe and ask big and deep and important questions about how things work and try to give you answers. That makes sense, Yeah, because the universe is a pretty big place, and there's a lot to explore and a lot to ask questions about, from the far reaches of the cosmos to our everyday lives and even what's happening right here on Earth. That's right. The physics that's literally under our feet has a big impact on how we live our lives and what's going on. Yeah, And we like to talk about not just kind of the what we know about the universe out there, what scientists know, but also what they're asking about the universe, including what if questions. That's right. We like to let Jorge wander into the control panel of the universe and start flipping switches. What happens if you turn off quantum mechanics? What happens if you delete dark energy or dark matter? And this is not just some cartoonists idol speculation about the universe. This is an important way to do physics, to think about could the universe have been different? What would it look like if we turned something off or something didn't happen. I feel like these are questions, Daniel, that supervillains have at their meetings in brainstorming sessions. It's like, what if we turn off dark energy here on Earth? How can we use that? How can we spend that to our advantage? Can we demand a five billion dollar ransom for not turning off dark energy? Right? Build a laser on the Moon? I think actually that was the plot of one of those movies. Yeah, it seems it seemed kind of quiet now because I think in those Austin Power movies he would ask for one billion dollars, which nowadays, you know, considering things, seems pretty small. Well, if it helps people, maybe they can imagine you doing this podcast from your underground volcano layer. That's right with my pinky next to my mouth. Stroking my cat or meani version of me. But if it makes you nervous to imagine Jorge at the control panels of the universe, then instead, remember these are just thought experiments. These are ways for us to imagine how the universe might be different and to wonder if it could be different. Yeah, because that's a big part of how SIGNS is actually done, right, Daniel, I mean when you're when you get together with your other physicist colleagues, do you sort of think about, like what would happen if this happened, or what would happen if this disappeared, or what would happen if this stuff that working? Yeah? Absolutely, we are often reverse engineering the universe. We're imagining what are the possible different scenarios that are consistent with what we see, Because what we'd love to do is make some set of observation, some things we see about the universe that tell us uniquely how the universe has to be. But an important part of that is sort of creatively thinking like is there another explanation? Is there something else that could have happened that explains what we see? And so you have to go through these thought experiments. You have to imagine what if there was no dark energy? Or what if the Sun turns into a black hole? Or how do we know that there isn't another planet out there? You have to imagine all those other crazy scenarios before you can dismiss them, and sometimes they lead to cra easy discoveries because they turn out to actually be true. Yeah, because you know, thought experiments are a lot cheaper than actual experiments. Right, they don't cause billions of dollars, just a few billion neurons. I still ask for billions of dollars from my thought experiments. But yeah, they don't go to building experiments. They just go to you know, funding my elaborate volcano layer inside of your head inside, that's right. Yeah, So today we'll be asking you a question that Um, it's pretty impactful. I mean it sort of affects everyone's lives on a daily basis, and in fact, it's sort of kind of defined to day for us. That's right. It's all about what's going on under our feet, and it's about how our world is moving and where it's going. Yeah, so we'd like to stay grounded in this podcast, so to be on the podcast, we'll be asking the question what if the Earth stop spinning now, Jorge, in your super villain brainstorming meeting, are you imagining sudden stopping the earth or sort of like gradually stopping it and turning it the other direction? I guess if I was a super villain, I would be aiming for maximum damage, Like what the worst case scenario? So whichever one of those give me the most ransom money? I guess as a super villain, that's that's optimal, right, I don't know. There's a delicate balance there. If you're blackmailing or extorting something, you want them to stay alive so they can continue to fund you in the future. Right. You don't want to obliterate your crime victims. You want to slurp some money out of them, but keep them functioning. I see, if you're a super villain, you would go for the subscription model, not the one time payment. You're more like the free to play type of game. That's right, because those victims never remember to cancel their orders and you just keep building their credit cards month after month. Man, that would make a pretty good plot for a movie. Uh anyway, So um, yeah, that's a pretty interesting question, Daniel, How did you come up with this question. This is a question and that a bunch of readers wrote in and asked us. It's something people think about, and it tells you that it's not just physicists out there that wonder about things in the universe. It's also everybody. And maybe some of our listeners are potential future supervillains. I hope not, because then we'd be enabling them in some way, Daniel. But also, you know a lot of our listeners are physicists, and in fact, isn't isn't everybody a physicist in a certain way? Yes, exactly. If you're the kind of person who does this kind of thinking, who thinks maybe the universe could be like this, what would happen if that happened, then you're doing physics and that makes you a certified physicist. Boom, Daniel will give you a PhD. Just right into PhDs for free at Daniel and Horg. Yes, welcome to your PhD in Internet physics. Yeah. So it so it seems to be a question that a lot of people are having out there. I guess where does that come from? Daniel? Does it feel like, you know, it's something so normal and some something that we're so used to that, you know, it's very curious to think about what would happen if it stopped. Yeah, I think that there's a lot of times in the history of science when we realized that something we thought was like bedrock truth, was fundamental to our universe, turned out to not be true. And so that gives you this instinct to question everything, to wonder, why is this happening? What would it be like if it stopped happening? And so I think that's where the instinct comes from, just to look around and ask questions about the basic nature of our reality. And I wonder how many people who are wondering this question think something good would happen as opposed to something not good. I don't think anybody imagines, Oh, I have a great idea, let's stop the earth from spitting, because it really annoys me. How we had daytime the vampire lobby, or maybe it's you know, cartoonists late for their deadline and wondering like, could I eke out a few more hours of late night effectiveness if I somehow stopped the earth. M That seems like a lot more work than actually doing the doing the thing. But that's the lesson in procrastination, isn't it? And you remember Superman did this once. Something happened he didn't like, and so he turned the Earth the other direction, somehow, reversing the flow of time to undoate the death of Lois Lane. What did your physics sense tell you when you watched that movie? Was it? Did it freak out? I think I was like a seven year old physicist when I first watched that movie, and I thought, huh, how could earth itself control the flow of time? That's ridiculous. M Do you think, um, well, gosh, I feel like we get into the whole episode about the Superman movies. Do you think he or Superman in general. Uh, do you think he spun the earth the other way? Or do you think he went back in time himself? Well, that's the other explanation for that scene. I see you're imagining he's going faster than the speed of light, and so somehow he goes back in time. Um, yeah, yeah, perhaps, But doesn't he isn't he pushing on the earth? Isn't actually spinning at the other direction. I have to go back and review that scene. But even he he just flies over it. Oh, he just plays out somehow that's that that makes the Earth spin the other way. For me, it was just he was just going back in time. I see, Yeah, well you know my feelings about time travel and fiction. It's all gibberish. I thought you're gonna say Superman, but um, I guess you were more specific. But anyways, we're wondering how many people out there have thought about this question or even have a possible answer to it. So, as usual, Daniel went out there into the Internet and ask folks to send in their answers. That's right, and thank you to the listeners who volunteered to answer questions without any research, just from the top of their head. If you'd like to offer answers to tricky topics without any preparation, please write to us two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think about it for a second. What do you think would happen if the Earth stops spinning? Here's what people had to say. I'm not sure what controls your spin. Perhaps has something related to the distance to the Sun and as well then the Moon, and maybe the gravity of other objects. Also could be that the flow of the inner cord, all the molten metal and the inside Maybe play a role I have. I don't know if they have no clue, and I guess it it may be decreasing in speed. I don't see why would it be increasing. But also that would mean that in any way that days are becoming either shorter or longer somehow. So far, I haven't seen the dis is an issue, but I guess it should be in a very small scale. What controls the Earth spin is its slowing down. Um the Earth and the Earth was born, and this is the way the Earth was born, spinning. UM. I don't exactly what control Probably the core controls the spinning, and UM, I think it's slowing down, but I don't know by how much. On the top of my head, I can't really think of any factors that would cause the Earth to spin around an axis. So I'm guessing that when it was formed, when the Earth was formed, the matter was spinning and it's just sort of kept on going. So I would say, yes, it's probably slowing down. UM. And I know that other planets also spin, but I think they're quite different speeds, so I'm guessing it's not anything to do with their size. So yeah, my guess would be that it's sort of It's just kept on spinning since it was formed, and nothing's stopping it is just friction. But as far as why it rotates at the speed it does about the north and south, I'm not sure why. I'm not sure what caused it. I did here a long time ago that it's slowing down. I'm sure the Earth received all of its spin in its primordial creation, and if it were a rigid body, a piece of rock, then it would keep spinning with the same angular momentum forever. But the Earth is not a rigid body. He has a fluid core, and a fluid core is subject to convection and other movements and forces, and therefore it must be losing some of the spin to friction and heat. And by the second law of thermodynamics, I suppose it must be losing spin better than acquiring spin. Whether this is a big effect or not, I'm not sure. I think the conservation of um angler momentum. It's probably the reason why the Earth is still spinning. Well, it is sloving town um, and it is being slowed down by the title forces from the Moon and also the Sun of course a other planets too, probably, but their effect is negligible. I think we add lip seconds because of that. All right, I feel like this these answers reveal a lot about our audience, Daniel, all of them short of trying to get down to the to the reason why the Earth would stop exactly. You have to wonder what's controlling the Earth spin. You can't just be like I'm just going to turn it off. You can't just like wander into the control room at the universe and flip a switch, right. You gotta follow the rules, right, and nobody said Supervillain or Orge flipping switches where you relieved we were. You're gonna be blamed here. I feel like I get blamed for a lot of things that I'm not actually responsible for. But yeah, a lot of interesting answers here though. A lot of them talk about the origin of the Earth spin and the future of the Earth spin, and so that's that's pretty fascinating stuff, all right. So let's dive into Daniel. Um, I guess maybe maybe a very basic question and just just take a step back, is to talk about why the Earth is spinning in the first place, right, Like we're so used to it turning around and giving us daytime. In my time, but you know, maybe not a lot of people haven't thought about why it is actually doing that. I mean, it's possible that it could not have been right. I guess it's possible. But you know, the amazing thing about spin is when you look out into the universe, essentially everything is spinning. I mean, the Sun is spinning, all the planets are spinning around their acts and then spinning around the Sun, and our solar system is spinning around the galaxy. And so spin is a pretty big part of existing in the universe. It's really kind of fascinating. M I guess it's sort of like motion in general, right, Like in space there's no very little friction, so if you're moving, you're gonna keep moving, or if you're spin you're gonna keep spinning. Yeah, exactly. There's this conservation of spin we call a conservation of angular momentum, which really just means like motion around some access, revolving around some access, spinning, and we have this conservation of angular momentum in our universe. And we talked recently on the podcast about fundamental symmetries. Conservation of angular momentum comes because there's no preferred direction in space and so you can translate that rotational symmetry of the universe into this conservation of angle momentum. But it has a real practical consequence. It means that if something starts spinning, it will continue spinning, right, And so you might ask then, like why is the Solar system spinning? Why is the Earth spinning? It's spinning because the stuff it was made out of was spinning. M And I guess maybe the question is why is the stuff that it started with spinning in the first place? I mean, in the Big Bang? Are you saying the Big Bang thanks for spinning? Yeah, that's a really fun question. It comes down to like how how stuff gets broken up into chunks. Imagine like a big swirling hot plasma, right, there's definitely motion in there. If you then break those things up into pieces, you can ask like, is one of those chunks spinning? Like one of those chunks is destined to be our galaxy or our Solar system or our planet. And if you take all the motion of all those particles is either going to be spinning clockwise or spinning counterclockwise, or perfectly somehow balanced so that there's no spin. And so if all those outcomes it's much more likely for it to be randomly spinning in one direction or the other than for it to be perfectly balanced. Right, But when you're talking about like the spin of a lot of things, you actually sort of mean like the like the overall direction of where each thing is going. You don't mean like each thing is spinning and so overall everything has a spin, right, You mean sort of like, um, you know, if things have a velocity sort of relative to the center, and that's sort of considered spin. Yeah, exactly, It's the motion of the object. So you can, for example, draw a line through it and say, all right, here's the thing I'm going to measure my spin around. And then you could ask how are things moving relative to that? And things that are moving in one direction will give you clockwise spin, and things that are moving the other direction will give you counterclockwise spin. So you've got to add all those up, and then you can get overall in motion. And it's either that it's all balanced so there's like weirdly no spin, or that things tend to be going more in one direction than the other. And if you just take like a random scoop of hot plasma from the early universe. It's got a lot of motion in it, so for that motion to like add up to zero spin would be pretty unusual. It's much more likely for all those things to be moving in direction which adds up to some kind of spin. Right, and then and then I think it's it's it's isn't It kind of like part of the way the physics work that if you just leave that system over time, it's going to eventually turn into a spinning disk. Everything's going to start spinning over around one axis and everything's gonna sort of stop spinning the other ways. Yeah, And that's a fascinating consequence of living in three dimensions because in three dimensions, you can always pick one axis for the spin, and you can always say, here's my axis. I'm gonna measure my spin around this axis, and that's the overall axis around which you have spin, and then gravity can coalesce everything around that axis. Things keep spinning, right, they keep going, but along that axis there's nothing to prevent gravity from flattening things, from things pulling down. So in the three dimensions of our space, you can always pick one axis where all the spin cancels except along that axis. If we lived in four dimensional space, then there would be two axes you could pick where the spin wouldn't cancel. So we live in a three dimensional universe, so there's always like one axis you can find where the spin cancels in two out of the three dimensions, but not around that axis. That's why galaxies and solar systems are discs, because gravity squishes things down along that axis, but not around that axis, right, because it sort of bounces it out um in one direction, but then it it does tend to flatten things in the other direction. Yeah. And this angular momentum is the reason why, for example, the Earth doesn't collapse into the Sun, right, It's the reason why we're still here. If we didn't have angular momentum, then the Earth would just fall into the Sun because of the force of gravity. It's the angular momentum that keeps us in an orbit, that keeps the planets from just collapsing into the Sun, and keeps the galaxy from collapsing into the central black hole. So angular momentum is very much why we're here. Yeah, And and it sort of works at different scales to like you said, like, um, you know, the galaxy is u had looks like a disc because everything spinning on sort of one um flat plane UM. But then the stuff within that plane also sort of callesces and and the same thing happens, and that that starts um spinning in one plane like the Solar system, and then also the stuff in the Solar system starts coming together due to gravity, like the Earth, and then that's also spinning in pretty much almost the same direction, right, yeah, exactly. The Earth spins in the same direction as the planets move around the Sun, and the planets move around the Sun in the same direction as the Sun rotates. Now that's mostly true for everything, and we'll talk about it in a minute. There's sometimes some deviations. Those deviations are really fascinating because they tell you, like, something weird happened here. For example, most of the stars in the galaxy rotate around the center of the galaxy in the same direction, but there are a few things out there they are going the opposite way, that rotate around the center of the galaxy, going the other direction from most of the traffic. I think they're called contrarian stars. No they're not, No, exactly. These are actually globular clusters. These like collections of star and as we'll talk about in a minute. There are some planets in our Solar system that spin in an unusual direction, and so you can ask questions like, if everything else is spinning this way, why is this spinning? The other way to spin is really fundamental to the whole like structure of the universe and the structure of our galaxy, and it reveals lots of interesting clues about how things came to be. All right, let's get into how the other planets in our Solar system spin and what would happen if our planet stop spinning. But first let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel, we are spinning here. We're in a spin class. Uh. And some people might be um listening to this while on a stationary bicycle spinning. But um, but if we're talking about give them some motivation, and you know, push push push, let's just the opposite. Let's encourage him to take it to relax. Why are you? Why are you bicycling so hard? You look great, man, don't worry about it. Think about the spinning doughnut. Alright, So we're talking about spinning things in in space and in our solarcism, And then you were saying that not all planets spin the same way. Yeah, there's a huge variation, not just in the direction of the spin, but in the rate of spin. Like the Earth of course, takes one day to spin. That's how we define a day. And it turns out that Mars also takes about a day to spin. But the bigger planets like Jupiter and Saturn, they spin much faster, like it only takes Jupiter nine hours to spin, and it's a lot bigger, which means it's surface is really going quickly. Do they measure that by like the surface or like do they do we know how fast the core is spinning. We think actually there's differential rotation some of these planets, that the core might be spinning at different speeds than the outer layers. But here we're talking about the outer layers. Were like watching stuff on the surface of the planet move. All right, So, um, there are spinning really quickly. Um, but there are some planets that's been really slowly. Yeah, Mercury and Venus, the ones that are closer to the Sun than us, they spent really slowly, Like Mercury takes fifty eight days to rotate once and Venus takes two hundred and forty three days, which is ridiculous. Yeah, that is weird. And now is there an explanation why some of them spin faster than others. So we don't really know, but we think that some of these things reflect like the history of the objects, like maybe they got hit and that changes their spin. And also it reflects something about the effect of the Sun on these objects, right, because the ones that seemed closer to the Sun seemed to be spinning slower, whereas the ones further out are spinning superfast. Yeah, because the Sun actually plays a big effect on the spin of these planets. It's not just like the original stuff that was spinning and is still spinning. The Sun is massaging these planets. There are gravitational tides on these planets. So the Sun pulls harder on the bits of the planets that are closer to the Sun and not as hard on the other side of the planet that's further from the Sun, and so that affects the shape of the planet. It causes these tides, these squeezing of the planet, and that affects its spin. But it also has another opposite effect, and that it heats up the air on the planet, so it heats up the air on one side more than on the other side, and that causes really complex atmospheric tides on the planet. Like the shape of the Earth's atmosphere changes as we go around the Sun, m and that can actually change the rotation of the planet. Yeah, differential heating of the atmosphere can cause like a shape difference on the planet, and it can cause differential rag on the planet. And so these two things. It's very complicated, and people still don't even really agree on how this is all working their complex models. But for example, we think that the reason that Venus rotates so slowly is that this is some sort of like balance between these gravitational effects and these atmospheric effects. That's that's come to balance Venus in this weird state, all right. And so it's not just how fast are spinning that is different between the planets. It's also like how they're spinning right and which direction they're spinning, Yeah, because one of them out there is totally crazy, like urine Iss is tilted ninety degrees. Most of the planets are spinning around an access that's parallel to the axis that the Sun is spinning, and right, the Sun is like the major player here, and everybody's following its lead. But urine is it spins around an access that's tilted like ninety degrees. It's spinning around an access that's that's like flat. With the Solar system, it's like laying down decide it's doing its own thing. And that's fascinating because you wonder like, well, what does that mean, Where did that come from? Why is that happening? And the typical story is that, oh, maybe Uriness was like hit by some really big object, because to change the spin, you need some sort of external force. Right, an object that's just spinning can't change its spin without some sort of external torque, something that's going to change its angular momentum. So you imagine like some object coming from deep space and smacking into it and changing its spin. And that's a possible explanation, but scientists don't actually think that's the most likely explanation. I see. The it is that they all started spinning the same way, like all the planets were spinning in the same direction. But if it's not, then something must have happened. Something must have happened. Yeah, And the problem with the story that it's like one really big collision that's smacked Urinus and knocked it over. Uriness seems to have kept its moons. If there was one really big collision that that was big enough to knock Urnus over really suddenly, then it probably would have lost its moons, which just gone flying out into space instead. To keep your moons and tilt over, you need some sort of like gradual process. So they're imagining now some sort of like a series of smaller collisions that like knock it a little bit, and knock it a little bit, knock it a little bit, doing it gradually so you don't lose the moons. Interesting, now, are the moons spinning in the same way that the planet is spinning or is it totally different. Most of the moons do spin the same direction the planets are spinning, and the same direction the planets are going around the Sun, but not all of them. And there's too many moons in the Solar System to even count for. And these big planets have lots of moons, and so there's definitely some crazy behavior there too many moons, I like that phrase, and that's something. There's one planet that even rotates backwards, like it spins the wrong way Yeah, that's Venus. Venus is going the other direction, you know, Like, first of all, it's bonkers that Venus takes so long to rotate. You know, it takes two hundred and forties something days to rotate, which is about as long as it takes for it to go around the Sun, which means that like a day on Venus is about the same as a year on Venus, means like, you know, it's always your birthday on Venus, or always your anniversary if you live on Venus. Nice. It's a lot of birthday kids you have to buy, but you have all data planet right, which turns out to be it's one long party in Venus. It is one long party. But yeah, it's going the other direction, right, It's it's spinning the opposite direction from its motion around the Sun. All right, So, um, it seems that most things are spinning in the Solar system. But now to get back to our question is, um, what would happen if the Earth stop spinning? What would happen if we weren't spinning the way we are? Now? This is not something I recommend you actually exploring, Supervillain Council, because this would be pretty bad and it depends a little bit on what you mean by the Earth stop spinning, Like, is it just the rock of the Earth that's stop spinning all of a sudden, or is the whole planet, including like the oceans and the atmosphere also stops spinning, right and all. It also depends on how fast it stops spinning, right, Like, are we hitting the brakes? Is Superman suddenly like putting its thumb on the Earth and making it stop, or are we talking about like over centuries or even years? Yeah, exactly. So the most dramatic scenario is like if the Earth stopped spinning basically immediately Superman pulls the brakes, and he only does so on like the surface of the Earth and its internals. In that case, you have some pretty dramatic effects because now the air is moving at a really high velocity relative to the ground. Before you stop the spinning, the ground and the air are both rotating around the center of the Earth. But the earth stops, then all of a sudden, the atmosphere is moving across the Earth instead of just sitting on it, and at pretty high speeds. Right. Yeah, Like if you stop the rock of the Earth, the everything on it would still keep on spinning. That's the problem, including the I guess starting with the atmosphere, but also us exactly also us, And it depends on where you are on the Earth. If you're at the equator, then the spinning of the Earth moves your holes or conference to the earth like twenty four thousand miles in twenty four hours. That means you're going at a thousand miles per hour, and all of a sudden the rock under you stops. Then basically you're moving at a thousand miles per hour relative to that rock. That doesn't sound good. Basically, Yeah, it'd be like being in a in a in a crash kind of you get launched in the direction of the spin. You get launched in the direction of the spin, and you would smack right into stuff around you, right, and so it'd be pretty dangerous. The world around us is not built for humans traveling through a thousand miles per hour, right, And you know, like the houses would stay attached to the rock presumably or maybe maybe not actually, but most of the stuff would stay attached to the rock. But then the wind would be basically going into thousand miles per hour. Yeah, my house is not strong enough to sustain a thousand mile per hour shock, but maybe yours is. But if you imagine that your house somehow does stay attached to the earth, then it's suddenly moving through the atmosphere at a thousand miles per hour, And a thousand miles per hour is a very strong wind, stronger than any hurricane, and it would basically just scour the Earth smooth at the equator, though only at the equator. Yes, at the equator. If you're at the north pole, then there's no wind, right because at the north pole, you're not moving across the surface of the Earth. You're spinning like you know, a top. But if that stopped, there'd be no relative velocity to the air. What if I'm pretty far up north, like a Norway or Canada, do I have had some good chances of survival there there? Or is it still pretty dramatic? Depends a little bit on how dependent you are and the rest of the Earth's economy. But you know, I think the mobal devastation would be such that, like society would collapse, you might immediately survive, you know, goes up like with some Trigg function of your latitude. Um So nor would definitely be more survivable than you know, equatorial Guinea. Alright, so that's if the Earth suddenly stops spinning. Um, what else would happen? What if it wasn't sudden? I think it's much more interesting to consider like an actual physical scenario where the Earth stops spinning more gradually and to think about, like what would life be like on Earth that has like very gradually come to a screeching halt and not spinning where everything and it survives technically, uh, nothing gets destroyed immediately? Um, now, and like now, what would the what would life on Earth be like if we weren't spinning? Yeah, and there's some pretty interesting effects like well, first is the obvious stuff, like well, there's no more day and night, right. Your vision of the sun seeing it only twelve hours a day is because the Earth is spinning and it turns the Sun behind the back of the Earth. But if the Earth is no longer spinning, then your days are not twelve hours long, they're like six months long. M M. Now with that affect like temperatures, like when one side of the Earth get roasted if it had a six month day and the other side would get frozen. Yeah, absolutely, it's like having summer but without a break. Right in the summer, it can get pretty hot because you're tilted towards the sun. But then you get a break and when the earth rotates and you get nighttime for things to cool off. But in this scenario where the Earth doesn't spin, you have like six months continuously of hot summer days, and so the temperature variations would be much more dramatic than they are now. So the seasons would get exaggerated, right, But would they get that would get hot and too hot for us to live in, like with it just roast everything on the daytime side of the earth, or would it just be a a long day and we would be okay, you just have to wear more sun block. Um Well, on average, the same amount of energy would fall on the Earth's surface, so you'd have colder winters and warmer summers, and so the peak temperatures would definitely be more extreme because it would be time for the temperature to build up day upon day upon day. But you're not gonna be like roasting humans when they go outside. It's just going to get more uncomfortable. And then there will be portions of the Earth that maybe inhabitable because they get too hot practically speaking, right, And I guess the biology would have to adapt to, like plants would have to get these to only getting sun six months of the year. Yeah, it's incredible how much of our ecosystems and how much of the biology on Earth is linked to this cycle of day and night. It tells you not only that it would be devastating for that it stopped, but that has been going on for a long long time, you know, so much of life on Earth depends on this cycle, assumes this cycle, which means it's probably never really been disrupted. Yeah, I guess you what, what what happened? Would you need um, Like, would all the plants die six months of the year and then come back the other six months or would they just do you think they would just adapt? Well, there are some plants, right that do die every six months and just go back to their roots and then regrow, and so plants that can do that would survive. So yeah, plants that need sun, you know, more than every six months would definitely die off, and we'd be left with a subset of plants that can survive this kind of weird environment, and then they would you know, evolve and grow to fill all those niches. So we'd have very different foliage on Earth. If you stop the earth and spinning and then waited like a thousand years, you'd have a very different collection of plants. Some of them, for sure, would survive well. I certainly would look forward to not having to work six months out of the year. That sounds pretty good, like be nailed. Just sticking for six months sounds sounds pretty good right now. But you might have to plan your vacations differently because the whole surface of the Earth would look different if the Earth wasn't spinning. Yeah, what do you mean, um, Like the continents would be different. Yeah, the continents would be different because the distribution of water would be different. Water responds differently than land does to spin. Water is liquid, of course, it's much more deformable, and so as you spin the Earth, the water tends to bulge up near the equators. And so that's the spinning of the Earth that keeps more water at the equator than at the poles. And if the Earth stops spinning, and then that water sort of resettles and a lot of it moves from the equator out to the poles. What so Wait, are you saying that that the water is deeper or taller near the equator than near the poles. Distance from sea level to the center of the Earth is greater at the equator than it is at the poles. And so if you stopped spinning of the Earth, that of course would equilibrate, and so a lot of water would flow to the poles. And what you get is basically two massive polar oceans, right, huge vast oceans near the poles, and then like a big supercontinent at the equator. Whoa meaning um forget about Norway. Then in Canada maybe like they may have survived the earth stop stop Earth hitting the brakes, but they're not going to survive the floods. Maybe, Yeah. Exactly, North Dakota now becomes you know, ocean front property. Oh and Panama becomes much bigger. That's good, exactly exactly Panama becomes much bigger. Wow, So it would reshape the map. It would totally reshape the bap exactly. You know when you look at the surface of the Earth, but you're seeing only, of course, is the land that peaks above the surface of the water. As if you change the water level, you're going to change the edges of the continents, as you're gonna change really what the Earth looks like. Are there numbers for that, like how much would the sea level change at the equator? Is it like hundreds of feet or several feet? Well, the distance from the center of the Earth the sea level is twenty kilometers greater at the equator than at the pole, so it would definitely make a dramatic effect. Mm hmm. Alright, let's get into some other fun consequences of the Earth stopping its spin and what might actually make it stop. But first let's take another quick break. All right, we're talking about the Earth stopping it's spin, and so far it's not good. I mean, longer naps perhaps you know, uh, new beach front property in North Dakota. But overall it doesn't sound good. And that's not even the worst that can happen. That's not even the worst exactly. The worst maybe is that you would all gain weight if the Earth stopped spinning. That's the worst. What depends on your personal priorities. But you know, part of your weight is the earth gravity pulling down on you. But there's a counteracting force there. There's the spin of the Earth helps gently push you away from the center of the Earth the same way that like the Earth's motion around the Sun is what prevents it from falling into the Sun. Is this centripetal force that pushes in the opposite direction, and the earth spin contributes to that. So if the Earth stops spinning, then there would only be the force of gravity and you would feel it more. There would be no counteracting force there. Wait, what are you saying that I weigh more in Panama than I do at the North Pole. Oh no, wait, I weigh less in Panama than I do in the North Pole, and weigh more in the North Pole. Yeah, that's right, because you're feeling the Earth's spin more in Panama than you are at the North Pole. So that's why you gain weight every time you go to Norway. Right, it's not just the snacks, the cold fish and and blubber you keep eating me there, Yeah, exactly. And if you did the opposite, if you spun the Earth faster, if you if you convince Superman to spin the Earth much much faster, if you've got it to spend eighteen times faster, So that only took like an hour and a half of the Earth to spin all the way around, then you would be witless on the surface of the Earth. We wouldn't just stop spinning. We might even lose our magnetic field. Yeah, if you stop the Earth from spinning, you would really play unpleasant games with what's going on inside the Earth. We talked a minute ago about how some of the planets have differential rotation, like parts of them are rotating at different speeds. That's actually kind of key because that might be what helps drive the magnetic field of the Earth. Remember, magnetic fields come from things moving in circles, usually like currents of charge or in this case, hot lava or melted metals that are flowing in these big currents inside the Earth. And we think that the magnetic field might come from the fact that those currents don't flow at the same speed as the Earth. But it's vital that those things are spinning. And if the Earth stopped spinning, it might slow or change that rotation. But it might not. To write like, maybe we could stop spinning, but the stuff inside of the Earth could keep churning. It could write it depends on what Superman is doing. If he's only pushing on the crust, right and he lets the stuff inside keep spinning. But if he's got some power to stop everything inside the Earth from spinning, if you like froze the Earth so that nothing in it was moving and it wasn't spinning, then you would kill the magnetic field, and then we'd be toast. And then we'd be toast. Yeah, because our magnetic field is really important. It's literally a force field that protects us from solar radiation. The Sun is constantly shooting out an enormous stream of protons and electrons and other crazy stuff and bombarding us with it, and the magnetic field deflects all that stuff. Yeah alright, so, um, it doesn't sound great. Let's hope we keep on spinning. Let's pay the ransom to the supervillain if they actually do threaten to stop the Earth from a billion dollars. Sounds like a good good value there. Yeah, everybody puts in twenty cents, and hey, we can save the planet. Right, Yeah, there you go. Now, um, what are some of the things that might actually make the Earth stop? Could this actually happen? I mean, of course Superman is not going to come and stop the Earth, because first of all, he's a good guy and the second of all, it doesn't exist. But is this a realistic scenario at all? Like could the Earth stop spinning one day? Eventually? Maybe? Maybe eventually. And if we look on really long time scales, we do see that there are some processes there that are changing the way the Earth spins. So, for example, we have a moon that's rotating around the Earth, and those two things are not separate. The Moon is exerting our gravitational force on the Earth, just like the Earth exerts force on the Moon, and that causes some weird friction, Like the Moon is squeezing the Earth. That changes the shape of the oceans, and that causes some friction with the surface of the Earth. And so what's happening is that the Moon is sort of stealing some of our rotational speed. By doing this, it means that the Moon is getting further and further out. So we're losing the Moon about a centimeter per years, getting further and further away. And to compensate for that, to conserve angular momentum, the Earth is slowing down. Whoa meaning like the like we're losing energy to the moon, And yeah, we're losing energy to the moon. It's called tidal friction. It's not happening very fast. It's like every century a day is two milliseconds longer. In one century and a hundred years, it will take two more milliseconds for the Earth to complete one rotation. So it's not something that's really going to change your life or my life where our kids lives. But I feeling it live as more sluggish as I get older, Daniel, Could that be part of the effect of the moon. Yeah, I think you're slowing down the rotation of the Earth. Um, But it means that like in a hundred and forty million years, our days will be twenty five hours instead of twenty four hours, so you'll get that extra hour to get all your stuff done. Two milliseconds that could then that could make a big difference. It really adds up. So that's a real thing that's happening, and it is gradually slowing down the spin of the Earth. And so you know, forty million years you slow down by an hour. After a billion years you slow down by ten hours or so, or eight hours after that. It doesn't really make sense to make predictions because at that point the Sun is going to expand and absorb the Earth. Anyway, And so it doesn't really matter how fast we're spinning at that point. It's going to be sunlight twenty four hours, no matter the twenty six hours, no matter what. That's right, But there are also other things that are happening here on Earth that are changing the rate of the Earth spin like a like in real time, like real time. It turns out that if you just move stuff around on the Earth, if you shift enough chunks of Earth around, you can change how fast the Earth is spinning, sort of like a figure skater on the ice. If she pulls her arms in, she spins faster. If she moved her arms out, she spins more slowly. So if you rearrange chunks of Earth you can have the same effect. And this kind of stuff happens every time there's like a really big earthquake. Yeah, it happened recently, right, like the Japan quake. Yeah, the two thousand eleven quake in Japan moved enough Earth towards the equator that it's sped up our rotation by one point eight microseconds because the Earth got less less spread out or more spread out. So to speed up something that's rotating, you need to move stuff closer to the axis of rotation, so that it would have to spin faster to have the same Anglar momentum. So I guess this means that it moved a bunch of Earth closer to the poles, which I guess would mean moving it away from the equator. Actually, wow, So does that Does that mean Daniel that if everyone on Earth suddenly laid down at the same time, would that make the Earth spin faster? Or if we all jumped up at the same time, would that make the Earth slowed down for a second? Yeah? Actually, I think the Earth would spin faster if everybody laid down, or if everybody like went underground into the subway, or if everyone went to the equator. Right, Yeah, everyone went to the equator. That would slow the Earth down. Let's do it, Daniel. Let's start a movement. Jorg is paying for everybody to go to Panama, make the day longer. Let's all moved to Panama. There you go. And at the same time, there are effects from the Sun, Like the Sun is having these tidal effects on mercury and venus. But we're also pretty close to the Sun, and so the Sun is sort of trying to do to us. What we are doing to the moon. Remember that the rotation of the Moon is not free. It's not just like doing whatever it likes. It's locked to the Earth because of these tidal forces. Earth is like squeeze the Moon a little bit, and it's tugging on the part of the Moon that's closer to it, so it keeps the Moon from rotating freely, which is why we always see one side of the Moon when we look up. Well, the Sun is trying to do the same thing to us. It's trying to lock the Earth's rotation, tugging on it so that the same surface always faces the Sun. And so if that happens far far in the future, that would mean something crazy. That would mean not just that the Earth stops spinning, but if there's like a dark side of the Earth and a light side of the Earth. All right, So it doesn't sound um like it's happening anytime soon, Daniel. It's not something we have to worry about anytime soon, barring a superman and maybe like a meteor hitting us, but then we would have other things to worry about. That. Yeah, if there's a massive collision with enough energy to like hit the Earth and stop it's spinning. Then we're anyway going to get devastated and our atmosphere is gonna be roasted to the fact that our destroyed corpse of a planet is no longer spinning. Afterwards, it's not really going to be the LEAs of how long, how long our day is? All right, well, it's still it's sort of interesting to think about, you know, kind of what we take for granted, you know, the Earth spinning. You know, we always think that there's going to be a tomorrow, but that's not necessarily true, no, exactly. And this kind of thing, the earth spinning, it's not necessarily something that's gonna last forever, and it's sort of an artifact. It just sort of depends on the original chunk of stuff that became the Earth, how fast it was spinning. We could have lived on a planet with a twelve hour day or thirty six hour day, twenty four hours. It's not fundamental, it's really quite accidental. Yeah, so it sort of really makes you appreciate not just the day, but the idea of the day. All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Hoping got you to think a little bit about your place in the world and what's happening right underneath your feet. Thanks for joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. Or more podcast for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or were ever you listen to your favorite shows.