What Would Happen If the Earth Suddenly Stopped Rotating?

Suara.com – Earth continues to spin like a top, even though humans cannot see, touch, or feel it.

However, what would happen if the Earth suddenly stopped rotating?

A geologist at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC, James Zimbelman, conducted an experiment to find out what would happen if the Earth stopped rotating.

“If The earth stopped spinning, the angular momentum of every object on Earth will tear the surface and produce a very bad day,” said Zimbelman, quoted from Space.com, Thursday (5/8/2021).

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The Earth makes one complete rotation on its axis every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09053 seconds.

That is, land at the equator moves at a speed of about 1,100 mph, where the rotational speed decreases to zero at the poles.

If the Earth stopped suddenly, the angular momentum exerted on the air, water, and rocks along the equator would continue to move at this speed of 1,100 mph.

The motion would travel to the surface and tear it apart, sending shards into the upper atmosphere and outer space.

Angular momentum itself is the momentum possessed by objects that carry out rotational motion.

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The angular momentum of a particle is defined as the product of the linear momentum of the particle over the distance of the particle to its axis of rotation.

This is the rotational force required to rotate the mass and the angular velocity.

“One of the fundamentals of physics is the conservation of angular momentum. Once something spins, you have to exert an equal force (in the opposite direction) to stop it from spinning,” Zimbelman added.

According to Zimbelman, the rapid and destructive transition will also evaporate most of the water on Earth’s surface.

Although most of the evaporated water will be lost, some will become new solidified minerals, such as olivine.

It would also result in an accretion process, where colliding fragments would be reabsorbed into the melted crust.

Even so, not all fragments will be reabsorbed through accretion.

Some parts of the planet will be swept away by the Moon’s gravitational pull, hitting the nearest satellite in orbit, and creating more craters on its surface.

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