· What would happen if an impact caused Earth to stop rotating?

Question

· What would happen if an impact caused Earth to stop rotating?

Answer 1

THERE IS NO GRAVITY,,,,,THE EARTH SUX

Answer 2

The real question is what would happen first. There are many possibilities including ones that we haven't or even can't think of, it has never actually happened to us after all.

Now by reducing to the impossible we can easily take out quite a few of the possibilities like being frozen and scorched by the sun since that will take quite a while, estimated between 6-9 months depending on the time of year the "event" occurs.

Now back to your actual question; as i can't really give you a real answer here are some possibilities.

a. Since the entire planet stops spinning the core would stop as well, resulting into the chaos seen in the omonymous movie "The Core" including a few more such as super volcanic eruptions all around the "southern" hemisphere, and melting down the inner layers of earth weakening her and eventually resulting into a series of devastating quakes(haven't seen the whole movie so i don't know if  these possibilities were covered).

b. Now the actual possibility of an asteroid stopping earths self rotation is many times lesser than one simply knocking her out of orbit( I'm thinking the chance of impact divided by the steady rate of earth's mass/(asteroid with high enough speed/speed) divided by the steady rate of the two bodies sizes. The reason is that to stop earth from spinning it would have to hit at a 90degree angle and opposite direction to the centrifuge force of earths speed and close to the end of her radius.Now to my point: because the supposed asteroid would hit at the such and angle it could create a fissure or even crack earth right through the middle.

c. I'm too tired right now to keep on doing this so i might continue tomorrow  morning, which is just a couple hours away.

Answer 3

It would be an absolute disaster with gravity eventually tearing our planet apart.

Cheers !

Answer 4

assuming we didn't die in the impact. firstly gravity would not stop because every piece of matter attracts every other piece, for example your celling is pulling you up a little, it has nothing to do with rotation, in actual fact we may experience more weight because our inertia would not be trying to take is out into space anymore. also electromagnetism has nothing to do with rotation either. and to whom ever said that there is truth in the movie the core, there is not a lot. basically what would happen is night and day would cease to change one side would have continuous day and the other night.

Answer 5

The impact itself would have to be powerful enough to wipe out all life on Earth, with tidal waves and dust filling the sky, etc.

If only one side of the Earth was ever visible to the sun, then that side would bake to temperatures well beyond human tolerance, and the other side of the planet would be far too cold.

Answer 6

I believe we'd all go flying about the place.

Answer 7

Earth becomes unstable

Could  break in half or something ...

one side too hot, the other side too cold

Answer 8

We'd get scorched on one side and frozen solid on the other. There might be a thin habitable line at the day/night boundary.

Answer 9

Gravity and the electromagnetic pull would stop, there'd be more volcano eruptions, and basically we'd all die...

You have to remember, there was once a planet where the asteroid belt is, but those in the know said it was in the path of a comet or some such body floating through the universe... it ran into it, and it smashed into a billion pieces.

Then again, they say that Mars will crash into the Earth in about 50,000 years. I have a feeling humans won't be around to see that day anyway, we'll blow ourselves up in the next two hundred years anyway.

Answer 10

You're talking a lot of inertia there. An impact of that size would fragment the Earth. There would be a zillion pieces. We would become a bunch of asteroids.

Edit: This is not rocket science! Isaac Newton could tell you this one without a blink - it is not even close. It would take an object of say, half the same size as the Earth, travelling at roughly the same speed and hitting the Earth just right (against the rotation and at about 1/2 the radius) to stop the rotation, not considering that impact by a much smaller object, at virtually any location, from any direction, would fragment the planet. It only takes an object the size of a house to wipe out all life, block out the sun (with debris), etc. There is no chance that the Earth could possibly come close to surviving an impact sufficient to stop it's rotation without being completely and utterly demolished! In fact, if you could magically, suddenly stop the rotation, the inertia would still fragment the planet without even having an impact by an object occur. We have a thin crust with a molten core here - very fragile.

Answer 11

If an object struck the Earth and was large enough to cause Earth to stop rotating or to reverse its rotation, it would be catastrophic for the Earth in almost every possible way! I think I'll just list some of the things that might happen:

1. If the Earth's rotation INSTANTLY stopped, everything not fixed to the Earth would continue to rotate around at the same velocity that they were before due to conservation of momentum. To us it would feel like a giant earthquake where the Earth would suddenly start "moving" in the opposite direction of the rotation. Buildings would collapse, the oceans would wash up onto land in large tidal waves, and there would be a large atmospheric wind shear at the surface. (The atmosphere is not attached to the planet either and would keep rotating too). Since we are traveling at about 460 m/s at the equator (about 1000 miles per hour) we would be tossed pretty far. (We wouldn't fly off the earth, though. Escape velocity is much higher.) As my officemate said when I told him about this question "We would be thrown into the wall at 1.5 times the speed of sound as the building was tipped off its foundation."

2. Seismic waves from the impact would travel through the earth causing massive earthquakes. Depending on the size and velocity of the impactor, the earth might even break apart.

3. Much of the atmosphere would be boiled off. A fireball would expand outward destroying material in it's path and polluting the rest of the atmosphere.

Those things would probably kill all life and level everything on the Earth's surface! It would be much worse than the extinction event that may have contributed to dinosaur extinction.

If we were magically able to stop the Earth with no bad consequences, life on a non-rotating or retrograde (backwards) rotating planet would be very strange.

* On a retrograde rotating planet, the sun and all the stars would rise in the west and set in the east.

* If the rotation was very slow, the day could be very long. This would have a huge effect on plant and animal life on the earth, some of which could not survive many days with no sunlight.

If there are any physics enthusiasts out there, from knowledge of the mass of the earth, the radius of the earth, the earth's escape velocity (use as impactor velocity), the rotation period of the earth, and the average density of the earth you can calculate a very rough estimate of the size of an impactor needed to stop the earth's rotation. If I assume that the earth collides with an object just sitting in its orbit right at the edge at the equator I get a rough radius of 1600 km for the needed size. In reality, you would probably need something much, much bigger. There are not any objects of this size in the solar system that we don't know about, which means that this scenario can't really happen.  

Answer 12

If something hit the Earth with enough force to stop it from rotating it would probably kill us in some other way before the effects of a non rotating Earth became a concern. Debris would probably blot out the sun for years, leading to freezing, fuel shortages and mass starvation.

Answer 13

Gravity would not change, no matter how many people in here say it.  Gravity is only a function of how much mass is under your feet, and the earth will weigh the same no matter if it's rotating or not, so gravity will be the same.

An impact that size would definitely kill us all, but maybe a very close pass by a massive object could do it without killing everyone.  I think some people are probably right in that the day side of earth would be hot and the night side would be cold.

"Then again, they say that Mars will crash into the Earth in about 50,000 years."

This is certainly not true.  Mars will NEVER crash into Earth, and 50,000 years is such a SHORT time in astronomical time scales that you might as well say Mars will crash into Earth tomorrow or next week or something.