Stuff You Should Know - What Would Happen If the World Stopped Spinning?

Episode Date: February 21, 2013

Over the last 400 million years, the day has grown longer by two full hours thanks to a slowing of the rotation of the Earth on its axis. While it will be a very long time before it stops spinning altogether, it never hurts to plan. Listen to Chuck and Josh discuss what a still Earth would look like. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's chipper and cheery Chuck Chuckers Bryant right across from me. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm about to go get that jar of moonshine

for my cubicle. And we've never done a show where we just drank moonshine the whole time. No, I think we should. What better day? I don't think it's at my desk. Oh, really? Yeah. Do you have beers still? Or there may be some over there. I don't know. What about beer? Well, there's a case of beer that some other dude sent me. Like not, it wasn't show related, but it's been sitting there for like a year. What? Shinerbock. Oh, I got some too. And then there's a couple of beers from like England. And then there may be some moonshine. Yeah. So let's just get drunk. Okay. So you're feeling good? Yeah, I'm just getting folks. We're gonna do that.

Is what you're saying. What's your intro? Well, my intro is you've already poo-pooed it. Yeah, I feel kind of bad about that. Oh, I don't feel bad. It's pretty much part for the course, buddy. All right. Are you ready? Yes. Chuck, Josh. Many, many years ago, roughly around 4.8 billion years ago. Yeah. The earth really started to form together from a bunch of dust and rocks and other dust. So says you. Because the universe was spinning, right? And all these particles were spinning. And as they came together, formed an accretion from an accretion disk. They formed the earth and all other planets, obviously, right? And all that spin, thanks to the laws of thermodynamics, one of them continued to spin and actually

accumulated. And so the earth just is spinning. That's why it's spinning, because it's always been spinning and all of its particles that make it up have been spinning. So it's spinning because of the conservation of angular momentum, right? Yeah. And Newton's first law of motion, of course. That's what it was, not thermodynamics. Oh, is that what you were going for? It was the law of motion, which is what? If an object, an object in motion will remain in that state of motion unless basically someone comes along and puts the brakes on it. Right. Unless something acts upon it. Exactly. And in the vacuum of space, there's nothing to act upon it to slow the earth down. So it's just going to keep going. And actually, the earth has slowed

in its older age. 400 million years ago, a day lasted 22 hours. Yeah, it's been slowing consistently over time, right? Yeah, but it's going to take a while to stop. I think in 400 million years in the future, yeah, they think that the day will be 26 hours. So two two years slowing by two or two hours a day, yeah, over 400 million years. It's not it's not quick. Well, in 400 million years, right? Is there going to be any earth? I don't know. That's such a good question. What will we look like? I don't think it's 400 million years. That's my guess. Okay, so the earth is slowing. We understand why it's spinning. We understand that it is slowing down. But what happens if somebody just comes along just stops it automatically, like just stopped, beep, stopped.

Well, and by the way, Jerry, that wasn't an edit. Yeah, that's our signal when we beep. Yeah, that is a call out to Jerry. So we're moving very fast, like faster than the speed of sound, even though it didn't feel like it. Right. So if someone stopped it, those same things that would happen if you just stopped your car all of a sudden, or a train stopped all of a sudden would happen here on earth, except it would be much more drastic, right? We're spinning much faster. We're spinning in an easterly direction at about 1000 miles an hour along the equator. Yeah. So yeah, if all of a sudden you stop the earth, everything that's not attached to the earth would keep going eastward, yeah, about 1000 miles an hour, mass, instantly dead, massive flooding.

Yeah, you name it, the wind, shockwaves, buildings, everything just go. And you said something that I find kind of interesting, like when I started to research like the earth's rotation, it's one of those things where I just assume I know what I'm talking about. And then the more I looked into it, I was like, oh, yeah, there's a lot of little stuff here. Yeah. Like questions, like why don't we feel the fact that we're moving through space at about 1000 miles an hour? Yeah. And well, I found the answer because the earth moves at a constant speed, a constant rate of rotation, there's no acceleration or deceleration, which we would feel if that happened. Yeah. Right. Why don't we spin off the earth? Do you know why? I do.

Okay, let's hear it. Because of gravity and the gravitational pull, like we want to spin off the earth. That's, you know, that's in there. But the force of gravity or the force that wants to spin us off the earth is 0.3% the force of gravity. Right, centrifugal force. Way much more gravity going on than there is the other. And I found that if the earth rotated at a rate of 80 minutes, right, it spun around on its axis one full time. So one day was 80 minutes long. That would be fast enough to overcome the force of gravity would be thrown off into space. Wow. But we're not going anywhere because that the earth's never going to start speeding up like that. That's just crazy talk. No. And it's not going to stop spinning either anytime soon. Yeah. But we can still

have fun with this topic. So say that we were existing right now as the earth was really starting to slow down, it's making its last turn. Yeah. So it did it gradually like Superman style. Right. And then the the ecosystems were intact. Yeah. Everything was generally intact the moment the earth stopped spinning the day the earth stood still. Exactly. Yeah. There would be some really interesting things that happened like a lot of our the geography of this planet. I took for granted until I read this article, which really opened my eyes. Yeah. So what what what are some of the things that would happen if they're just stopped spinning? Well, seismologists think that it would set off a massive chain of super earthquakes because they suspect that the rotation the earth

plays a big role in the movement of the tectonic plates. So they seismologists think that, you know, we would all be dead because of massive, massive earthquakes. Okay. We'd probably be dead for a lot more reasons, which we can explore. But yes, earthquakes like how would you die first? Basically, yeah, because think about it that that spinning earth the centrifugal force of the earth is so strong that it basically keeps the oceans in place. It creates a bulge. Yeah. Around the equator like the earth is not a perfect sphere. It's bulge at the middle. Yeah. And it's that's because of its spin. And that bulge actually brings the world's oceans toward the equator in the southern hemisphere. They move north in the northern hemisphere. They move south, but

it's being pulled toward the middle of the earth that are spare tire. So if it stops spinning, all of a sudden, the world's oceans would go toward the poles. Yeah, like quickly. It'd be pretty cool to see. I guess not if you're at the polls. Did you see a map of what it would look like? Yeah, like basically a super continent in the center on both sides of the equator. Yeah, like all the way around the globe and two big oceans, one on top and one on the bottom. Yeah. And the one on the top of the Arctic would actually be about 1000 meters deeper. Not because there'd be more water there, but they because the Antarctic basin is bigger. Yeah, deeper. That makes sense. So the water would be shallower by comparison. Yeah, more displacement. But yeah, it's looking

so like Chicago would be just underneath the north shore of the northern hemispheres ocean. Wow. And from that point down the United States would be largely intact all the way into the Caribbean south. It'd just be land. It's pretty neat. It's a neat looking map. I love freaky weird maps. Yeah. Yeah, like the early maps. Those were a little weird. There's a blog called unusual maps, I think. Freaky weird maps. I can't remember what it's called, but it's just like this blog about strange maps. Oh, cool. It's pretty neat. I used to collect maps. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I mean, I didn't have a ton. I had like 15 or 16, like cool map posters. Nice. There's still a few of them, but I think they went the way of the dodo in my house. Were they like

scholastic foldouts? No, like, you know, some were like, you know, Civil War map or the earth at this point map or, you know, just very, none of them were just straight up. Yeah. I think I had one straight up map. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Step out of piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts

as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Harden, Bradford, host of the award winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma

surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flip through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award-winning artist Michelle Williams and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood, and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So what else would happen? One thing

that would happen is the, and Robert Lam wrote this, didn't he? No? Jonathan Attabury. That's right. Attabury. Attabury. Good job. He says that it'll take a whole year to pull off what the earth does in a day. Yeah. Makes sense. So one part of the world would be a blazing, scorching desert. And then one part of the earth would be a barren frozen wasteland. Half a year. Half a year. And that's because the, since the earth rotates on, on its axis in about 24 hours, a little under, I think. Yeah. If it stopped doing that, it would still move around the sun. It just wouldn't spin on its axis. So I figured this out. If you're having trouble visualizing it like I did, put your thumb in front of your face out a little bit so that your thumbnail is facing

you. And then pretend that the sun is in between you and your thumb. Yeah. And your thumb is the earth. Okay. And you just rotate it around so that your thumbnail is facing you all the time. Yeah. But it's going around the sun and you'll see that at any given point, right? It's, the, this part of the earth is facing a different part of the sun. The thumbnail. So there would be seasons, but there'd be four seasons and they would be very different. The line demarcating them would be really different. And when you went from winter to summer, eventually, you would have nothing but sunlight and then nothing but dark depending on the season. Yeah. The temperature swing would be huge. Right. So what that means is we'd probably have a really difficult time

propagating with, with husbandry in general. And you don't mean sex. You're talking with plants and animals. I'm not sure what you mean there. Propagating with husbandry sounded like a euphemism. No, yeah. No, just farming and animals. All that would be more difficult, if not impossible to grow crops, you know, for, or, you know, maybe you grow them during the sunny parts of the year, what you can grow and then store. But we'd be in bad shape. I think we'd be in very bad shape as far as that goes. But botanically speaking, we are pretty, pretty quick-witted species. So we could possibly overcome it technologically. Maybe. You know, I'll bet we'd have really good sunglasses. Yeah, that's true. And coats. What else would happen? Anything?

Well, the magnetic field, well, gravity, I got something on gravity here, gravity would be changed, which is not in the article. But it would change significantly if it stopped spinning, because the centrifugal force, of course, what you're talking about contributes to that gravitational field, and it wouldn't exist any longer. So the gravitational field would be strongest at the poles instead of at the equator. And who knows what that would do. You'd just be a lot heavier at the poles, right? You think? Maybe. Okay. We'd also lose a very interesting thing called the Coriolis effect. Yeah, my favorite. Which you know, supposedly, with the Coriolis effect, if you're in the northern hemisphere, if you flush a toilet,

the water goes down the drain clockwise and in the northern hemisphere counterclockwise, that's not true. It's all plumbing. It's all the design of the drain. The Coriolis effect is there. It has nothing to do with what part of the earth you're in. No, it has nothing to do with the drain. Supposedly, the Coriolis effect, the fact that the earth is spinning faster at the equator than it is at the poles, has long been tapped as a reason for whirlpools. Right. They're saying, no, that's probably, if you're talking about a drain, it's the angle of the drain. It's the design of the drain. It's the water rushing in when you flush the toilet. It has nothing that's an old wives tale. But there's a Coriolis effect. It's just not quite as interesting.

Basically, it says that if you leave the north pole and fly toward the equator, toward a certain mark of the equator, if you go in a straight line, you're going to miss your mark because the earth's spinning and it's spinning faster at the equator than it is at the pole. Such more Coriolis effect. It's a curve. It would look like a curve. Yeah. You have to basically correct longitudinally to hit your target. You just can't fly in a straight line from the north pole of the equator if you're trying to get to a certain spot. Yeah. That's the Coriolis effect. Nice. I guess. Unless I'm missing something, it seems kind of basic. Yeah. It's kind of basic once you wrap your head around it. There are some things that are

slowing the earth down. Like you said, the days are longer now than they used to be. Yes. They used to be what, 22 hours you said? 400 million years ago. Yeah. Okay. So we are slowing down. There is tidal friction and the tide drags 2.3 milliseconds on each century every 100 years. So that's pretty slow. Right. But it adds up over time, literally. Of course it does. Weather can affect it too. Winds can actually slow it down. Earthquakes can redistribute the mass and actually speed up. Didn't it speed up in the earthquake in Japan? Yeah. I think by 1.8 microseconds, the Earth's day, its solar day was accelerated because that earthquake was so massive. Nothing we could notice. What about magnetic field though? That's

what I don't fully get. So with the magnetic field, we're not quite sure why Earth or how Earth has a magnetic field. But the prevailing theory is that because of this Coriolis effect in the center of the earth, whirlpools are created of molten iron. And as this molten iron moves around and forms these whirlpools, it actually generates an electrical field, an electrical current, which in turn generates a magnetic field. So we have this magnetic field. We think that's how we have it. But we also have long suspected that the magnetic field protects the earth from solar winds, which are positively charged ions from the sun that travel about a million miles an hour off of the sun toward us and they're about a million degrees Celsius. And we long thought that

it protected our atmosphere from being stripped of the ions that we need. Then we started looking at other planets that don't have any magnetic field because I think it's just the earth and the sun and our solar system are the only ones with magnetic fields. And we found that they lose ions at about the same rate that our atmosphere loses ions. So we don't know what the magnetic field's doing. But I did come across this one interesting fact. We lose about a ton of atmosphere a day. Really? Yep. And mostly in the form of water vapor. So the earth is drying out very slowly. Wow. Yeah. Boy, so we're slowing down. We're drying out and 400 million years will all be toast. Yeah. That's pretty much the long and short of this.

And what we did a podcast on what would the earth look like and different intervals in the future. Yeah. And I think we eventually landed on ultimately destruction and if we're even here any longer. Yeah, exactly. We'll use the earth up. It's probably where we landed. Yeah, I think you're right. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course. Yes, they can do that. And I'm applying sample of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our

government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? They're just like pillaging. They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford, host of the award winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over

18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flipped through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award winning artist Michelle Williams and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Well, good going, Chuck. Let's hear it for Chuck, everybody. Do you have anything else? I do not, sir. If you want to learn more about the earth standing still go to howstuffworks.com and type in earth and it will bring up some pretty cool articles and probably entire channel. There's earth science just fascinates me. Yeah, me too. I said search bar somewhere in there, which means it's time for listener mail. You know, you called out for how we helped you in your life emails. We got one from Rachel in Portland, Portland. You guys, you guys have helped me through some of the toughest times in

my life. I'm short in the beginning. Okay. In August, I moved from a small town in Mississippi to attend the University of Portland in Oregon. Transition was rough. Needless to say, I did not handle it well. I started smoking again. I had trouble focusing on and attending classes, and I could tell that I wasn't settling well or making friends. On top of all that, my three-year relationship with my high school sweetheart fell apart because of the distance and the stress of us both beginning university. I began to relapse into depression, something I've struggled with off and on for five years. Found myself unable to listen to music even because every song I heard made me so sad. One of those heartbreak days when you just sit around and listen to the radio and

cry. I downloaded your podcast to listen to as I walked to and from classes and while I did homework, I did notice at first that every time your podcast was on, it made me laugh. I'd feel a little bit better. About halfway through the semester, I found the courage to seek help and visit the campus health center for therapy in antidepressants. I am now in my second semester of college with a 3.94 GPA. Wow. I have a few great friends and I'm even dating someone new. Nice. I love my school and I love the city of Portland. I feel as if your podcast served an integral part of helping me make the transition from home to here. Learned and laughed with y'all and now and then a southern draw will sneak into one of your voices and make me nostalgic with

us out. This may sound silly but I feel I've come to know you guys. Really wanted to thank you for helping me through such a hard time. Rachel 18 in Portland. Thanks Rachel. It's awesome. I'm glad to hear you're doing better. Yeah. I had a rough first few weeks of college. I think a lot of people do and I think my advice is to just stick it out before you know it. You're going to be loving it. Yeah. I remember my parents telling me that when I went off to camp. Oh yeah. Even like camp. I did not like camp now. Did you like going off to college? Yeah. It's fine. You're probably ready for that. Yeah. I was I freaked out because I at the last minute I tried to change to go to Georgia Tech because my brother was there and I was basically scared. I was like

I just want to go to school with my brother and it didn't it was too late to get the application and so I was like I guess I'm going to Georgia by myself. Yeah. And it ended up being the greatest thing ever. I'm glad. I'm glad you stuck it out. You know the rest of the story. Yeah. It is true. I mean like you know just hanging in there and being brave even when it feels like that's the worst thing to do often. Yeah. It's often the best thing to do. And six years later I had a college diploma and a lot of friends for life. Right. Yep. That's good. Chuckers. Let's see if you have a great story about solar wind or how we've helped you or college or whatever we want to hear about it. You can find us on Twitter. Right. S Y S K podcast. I feel like a lot of you aren't getting

that. S Y S K podcast. It's a great Twitter feed. Yeah. Josh is the Twitter master. We have a great Facebook page that Chuck Helms Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. Yeah. People love that. You can send us an email which is fine. That's stuff podcast at discovery dot com and everybody seriously stuff what you're doing right now. Go to the home of Josh and Chuck on the web. It's our very own website. It's fun. It's called stuff you should know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like

looting? They're just like pillaging. They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Where were you in 92 bouncing your butt to Sir Mix a lot wondering if you like Billy Ray Cyrus could pull off a moment. Now I heard as a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Longfied and on my new show where were you 92 we take a ride through the major hits one hit wonders and shocking scandals that shaped the wildest 12 months of music history. You know the president came after me. Everybody time Warner was madness. Music was magic and I had completely burned that to the

ground. I realized I'm the forbidden fruit. So listen and follow where are you 92 on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.