REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, Although Earth it’s always spinning, we can’t feel it, and you might take it for granted. But what happens if you stop?
Reported Space, Tuesday (16/1/2024), if the Earth suddenly stops rotating, a major disaster will occur. Almost everyone and everything that is not on this planet will continue to move at the Earth’s current rotation speed, the fastest being about 1,600 km/h, which is along the equator.
“The momentum of all materials that normally rotate, water, air, all buildings and similar objects, will cause them to continue moving,” said Andrew Layden, a professor of physics and astronomy at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, United States (US). “So they are [akan] separates from the surface and continues to circle, essentially, in a low orbit around the Earth.”
The only parts of our planet that are likely to be less affected are near the poles, where they rotate little or not at all. However, these extreme forces would likely trigger tsunamis and earthquakes, so things would be very bad for the entire Earth.
If the Earth slowed down and gradually stopped, life would still change drastically. For example, the length of our days and nights becomes longer until each lasts six months. Layden says this will also change our weather, as air and ocean currents are heavily influenced by the Earth’s rotation.
He also said it was possible that the lack of rotation would affect how well life could survive on Earth. Our planet produces a magnetic field that protects us from harmful radiation from outer space.
Scientists think the Earth’s magnetic field is related to the flow of liquid metal in our planet’s outer core, which generates electric currents and magnetic fields resulting from the Earth’s rotation. Some researchers suggest that the loss of Mars’ magnetic field in the past contributed to the fact that the planet was uninhabitable, Layden said.
Scientists say the good news is that it is unlikely the Earth will stop spinning, scientists say. Every planet we know of rotates, and even stars rotate slowly.
Stars form from enormous, swirling masses of gas and dust that condense gradually. Because the solar system was formed from a large disk of debris surrounding the rising sun, the material that makes up the solar system also rotates. This is why most of the planets in the solar system rotate in the same direction.
Planets also rotate because objects hit them, often during the formation of the planet. Much like billiard balls, unless the objects collide directly with each other, one or both will start to spin.
Layden revealed that getting hit is also the only way for a planet to suddenly stop spinning, or at least have its rotation drastically slowed down. If a very large object were to hit our planet, as occurred in the collision that formed Earth’s moon, the huge impact might counteract Earth’s spin or even cause the planet to spin in the opposite direction. This is probably the case for at least one planet in our solar system.
“Venus rotates very slowly, even very slowly compared to Earth and (all) the other inner, terrestrial planets,” Layden said, perhaps as a result of the collision.
Uranus also rotates in the opposite direction to Earth, namely on its side. Scientists suggest that the original rotation of Uranus and Venus may have been “stopped” by one large impact, several smaller impacts, or disruption of their rotation by large gravitational forces. In the case of Venus, this may be due to the sun’s gravitational pull on its thick atmosphere; for Uranus, it may have been a large moon that was eventually knocked out of its orbit.
Fortunately, our planet’s rotation is in no danger of being disrupted by enormous gravitational forces, and if Earth were to collide with a planet-sized object, there would be less to worry about. However, Layden said, this scenario is unlikely in the modern solar system, because the orbits of the planets are quite regular and unlikely to intersect with large objects.
2024-01-16 16:37:24
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