Lois Lane would be resurrected and unburied by rocks if there had been an earthquake caused by a nuclear strike shortly before this happened.
this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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We should assume that has happened.
Didn't they make a documentary about this?
We all die, a lot us rapidly when the water keeps moving across the rock that just stopped and super tsunamis a good portion of the planet. The rest of us die slowly as the weather patterns are ruined for likely decades or centuries and we starve due to crop failures and the fact that the worldwide logistics we depend on is forever gone.
Edit: actually I thought some more, if it’s sudden then we’re all crushed by flying into the air into stuff at 1000 miles an hour when the rotation stops. If it’s gradual then we all starve since the weather is ruined
You forgot about air. If the planet suddenly rotates in the other direction, it would level everything, and the probably turn the planet into a molten marble from the friction.
I don't know. Couldn't it be gradual enough that we barely noticed the acceleration changes but still only take a couple of hours?
Lois Lane would come back to life
Randall Munroe made an xkcd about this. It's not on his website unfortunately, but someone else uploaded it. I would recommend using a adblocker though.
But OP asked a different question. Not what happens when earth stops spinning but what happens when earth spins in the other direction.
The answer is largely the same if you make the same assumptions though, just roughly twice as bad because not only does the earth stop and everything not attached goes yeet, but everything attached starts moving just as fast as you in the opposite direction
Time goes backwards and I get to eat that cake I had last week?
A week is too long. Before you can eat it again backwards, you have to push it up your rear end...
Good news, everyone!
You had it last week it has to back in first
*shlorp*
It changes the way stars appear to move for us. Astrology teachings would have to do a full 360 degree turn to retain their accuracy.
Full 360 degree turn, eh?
:)
I can’t say this with any authority, but I think the biggest effect would be in weather patterns and the subsequent downstream effects of having different weather.
Nah, the biggest effect would be in every single thing at or above ground level being instantly shot eastward at somewhere between 0 and 1,000 miles per hour. After that the weather is pretty much irrelevant because anything that would experience it would be dead as shit.
Only if the rotation would stop immediately. A slow deceleration would not let that happen
But who cares about the obviously much more boring option?
I mean, people have survived all kinds of crazy shit, I'm confident that many would actually somehow survive.
I mean, sure, there will be some people on the lower end of that 0-1,000 MPH curve that are not in very close vicinity to any objects to splort against. Inupiat, Aleut, Sami, Yamalo-Nenets... anyone inside the arctic circle should be relatively fine, speed-wise.
At least anyone in space at that time
Ehm, good one... what would happen to all satellites and ISS? Would all that junk still spin in the same orbit or would it be flung out into space?
I think they would be going on with their business because gravity would be still the same. IANAP
Can I volunteer to be one of the things shot eastward at 0 mph?
The earth's magnetic field would probably 'follow' and change it's direction. But only a while later and very slowly. During the change, that would leave us without a magnetic field for some time. Then we have lots of cosmic rays hitting us, damaging some of the life on eath.
Sundials will be useless
Need more info. Does the earth immediately stop spinning and start spinning in the opposite direction? Or does it gradually stop over an arbitrary amount of time and reverse directions? Haven't seen the episode....
In the episode it had stopped for a while first, then they slowly spun it up.
I don’t really know but based on the answers here this is the disaster movie I need next
Only a change in rotational speed would be bad. If earth were to rotate in the opposite direction since the beginning it would behave just like today.
That was my thought. The only major change I could see happening (besides the cataclysmic events from the change) is the direction of sunrise/sunset.
Exactly
Proof: define Antarctica as North. Now earth is rotating in the other direction.
It spins the other way.
yna eb t'now erehT
Everybody would fall over.
Nothing. Only have to swap N-S poles and East becomes West. 💈 🧭
If it happened suddenly, there would be massive tidal waves on western coasts.
The sun would rise in the west and set in the east. Timezones would be backward. People in different areas would have oddly desynchronized sunlight exposure relative to the time on their clocks. For example, if this happened at sunset for you, the sun would rise first from the east and set in the west, then rise again from the west and set in the east. You'd be halfway through a double day at the moment of switching. Other people would have a double night.
Nothing if it does a flip first.
All the wind on the planet now blows to the opposite direction
Would somebody smarter than me take these seeds of an idea and expand on how the physical forces would affect the composition of the Earth? My intuition tells me the shear forces would obliterate the planet, but I'm not sure.
Because of the nature of a sphere, the material rotating at the poles is effectively not moving at all. Whereas the material moving at the equator is moving at the maximum rotational speed of the Earth.
Likewise the core of the Earth is effectively still and the speed of each strata moves correspondingly faster as you get closer to the surface.