I know what exactly will happen if the earth stops rotating all of a sudden – the momentum would cause untold destruction and everything not securely anchored to the ground would be hurled eastward at devastating speeds. I’ve seen a shittona clickbaity videos on YouTube. I also know the final result of this would be 6 months of daytime and 6 months of night. But what would be the other visible effects on earth which would start as soon the deceleration begins? Will we be able to survive?
In: Planetary Science
Astronomers would notice almost instantly. The rotation of the earth is measured within fractions of a millisecond, and you’re talking about losing several seconds daily.
At the end of day 1, GPS systems are a few hundred metres out, and this gets worse very quickly.
After 1 year, the day is about 25 hours long, making days hotter and nights colder. Our calendar is probably still in use, but is out of sync with the seasons by about 1 week. The weather is unpredictable because meteorological models assume a 24 hour day, though there will have been time to update some
The drift accumulates, and everything is three times worse at the end of year 2. The extreme temperatures start to wreak havoc with agriculture, pushing up food prices. The climate is probably also affected.
Parts of the world become uninhabitable in summer by about year 3 to 5, because the days are just so long and they heat the ground so much. This leads to a massive refugee crisis, but not as massive as the sheer number of deaths – these places include some of the most densely populated areas on earth. Nobody wants to live anywhere near the tropics. The global economy is totally trashed, nobody anywhere has enough food.
Heating of the ocean pumps massive amounts of water into the atmosphere, which leads to megastorms like we’ve never even imagined.
From then on out it just gets steadily worse.
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