If the world stopped turning,

Dirty Frank

If the world abruptly stopped turning for say, five minutes, and then just started turning again like normal, wouldwe all be thrown forward on our faces when it stopped and thrown back when it started again? I know this is impossible and that there are other implications!

Also, relative to the centre of the earth, what speed are we moving at on the surface?

johnmcdnl

http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/71/howfast.html

it's all explained there..

the earth is spinning at 1000mph or 1600kph to revolve once in 24hrs...
as for spinning round the sun we're moving at 66000mph or 107000kph

and when we take the speed that the galaxies and the milky way is moving it turns out we're moving at 1.3million mph or 2.1million kph



as for being thrown forward - as we are all moving at 100omph we have inertia - if we were to suddenly stop the force would throw us at 1000mph forward unless we were secured to the earth - and this would be the same as being in a car crash into a wall at this speed so i'm assuming this would just kill everyone on earth

if you were tied down then the sudden jolt would kill you I'd say - and if you weren't tied down you'd be thrown forward at 1000mph which would probably kill you too...



as for starting up again - then we'd be thrown backwards at the same velocity... but we'd be all dead
if this happened the earth would be ripped to bits basically and anything loose at all bar the bedrock would be thrown due the the sudden stop...
i think that's right but I'm open to be corrected

sesna

johnmcdnl wrote: »

http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/71/howfast.html

it's all explained there..

the earth is spinning at 1000mph or 1600kph to revolve once in 24hrs...
as for spinning round the sun we're moving at 66000mph or 107000kph

and when we take the speed that the galaxies and the milky way is moving it turns out we're moving at 1.3million mph or 2.1million kph



as for being thrown forward - as we are all moving at 100omph we have inertia - if we were to suddenly stop the force would throw us at 1000mph forward unless we were secured to the earth - and this would be the same as being in a car crash into a wall at this speed so i'm assuming this would just kill everyone on earth

if you were tied down then the sudden jolt would kill you I'd say - and if you weren't tied down you'd be thrown forward at 1000mph which would probably kill you too...


i think that's right but I'm open to be corrected

You'd be safe in an airplane

johnmcdnl

sesna wrote: »

You'd be safe in an airplane

yes - when you think about it an aeroplane is probably the only safe place to be unless the sudden stop had some form of effect on the atmosphere - centripetal force and gravity might be affected enough to change the airflow patterns which could bring a plane down in the immediate aftermath of the stop

slade_x

Dirty Frank wrote: »

Also, relative to the centre of the earth, what speed are we moving at on the surface?

It really depends on where you are on the earth

As we all know earth completes a rotation almost once every 24 hours. taking the circumference of the earth at the equator is widely accepted to be 24,901.55 miles so 24 hours divided by 24,901.55 is 1037.56 to 2 decimal places

So at the equator thats 1037.56 miles per hour, depending on your latitude this number will change due to the lesser circumference as you leave the equator, as per example a cd rotating in a drive. the outer end of the disc track will be slower than the inside track (which is why you get greater head read/write speed on the inner tracks)

To get the result at any latitude we can just simply multiply the cosine of the degree in latitude by the speed at the equator

Ireland has a latitude of 53 degrees north
the cosine of 53 degrees is 0.601815023 so that by 1037.56mph = 642.41mph approximately standing on a spot in ireland

So someone standing at the poles @ 90 degrees the cosine is 0. at the poles the relative speed is practically 0 mph since the earth revolves on this axis along the poles

sesna wrote: »

You'd be safe in an airplane

You would not be any safer in an aeroplane as the atmosphere is gravitiation bound to the earth. the atmosphere travels with us relative to ground speed depending on elevation (thats why its calm and easy to take a breath on a mild day). at the surface if the earth stopped its rotation keeping your momentum wouldnt be your biggest worry, An atmosphere at sea level would fly past you at the relative speed of the surface if you remained stationary. Even though a plane doesnt have to contend with that much atmosphere relative to the ground I'd doubt a plane would be able to fly stable with that kind of atmospheric disturbance. they have trouble enough with average wind speeds

Healio

Some waves would be going around the world at that point. Everything turning then stop, all the water keeps going in its direction, if the force that puts you to the wall doesnt kill you, you'll probably drown.

Cú Giobach

johnmcdnl wrote: »

- and if you weren't tied down you'd be thrown forward at 1000mph which would probably kill you too...

Since we're traveling at 1000 mph (at the equator) If the earth suddenly stopped we wouldn't be "thrown" forward at 1000mph, we would just keep going at the speed we were originally traveling at, there would be no sudden acceleration to kill you. Death would occur for other reasons ( it would be quite an interesting second or 2, to me anyway).
This is the same in a car crash you're not so much thrown forward, as just keep going as the car suddenly stops and its the deceleration as you hit the steering wheel, windscreen etc that kills you.

sesna

slade_x wrote: »

It really depends on where you are on the earth

As we all know earth completes a rotation almost once every 24 hours. taking the circumference of the earth at the equator is widely accepted to be 24,901.55 miles so 24 hours divided by 24,901.55 is 1037.56 to 2 decimal places

So at the equator thats 1037.56 miles per hour, depending on your latitude this number will change due to the lesser circumference as you leave the equator, as per example a cd rotating in a drive. the outer end of the disc track will be slower than the inside track (which is why you get greater head read/write speed on the inner tracks)

To get the result at any latitude we can just simply multiply the cosine of the degree in latitude by the speed at the equator

Ireland has a latitude of 53 degrees north
the cosine of 53 degrees is 0.601815023 so that by 1037.56mph = 642.41mph approximately standing on a spot in ireland

So someone standing at the poles @ 90 degrees the cosine is 0. at the poles the relative speed is practically 0 mph since the earth revolves on this axis along the poles




You would not be any safer in an aeroplane as the atmosphere is gravitiation bound to the earth. the atmosphere travels with us relative to ground speed depending on elevation (thats why its calm and easy to take a breath on a mild day). at the surface if the earth stopped its rotation keeping your momentum wouldnt be your biggest worry, An atmosphere at sea level would fly past you at the relative speed of the surface if you remained stationary. Even though a plane doesnt have to contend with that much atmosphere relative to the ground I'd doubt a plane would be able to fly stable with that kind of atmospheric disturbance. they have trouble enough with average wind speeds

If you were in a Lockheed U2 spyplane though, or some other spyplane at approximately 80,000 feet where 99 per cent of the atmosphere is below you, I reckon you would be okay.