Mountains and Earth's rotation?

Question

Do mountains act like the weights on an automobile's wheel in order to keep Earth's rotation (on its axis) smooth ?

Answer 1

nah

Answer 2

If you look at earth from outer space, the mountains don't actually stick up very far.  Even Everest is tiny compared with the rest of the globe.

Even flying over the Alps in a plane, the mountains lose their grandeur.

So, basically, they just aren't big enough to have much effect.

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Incidentally, the earth DOES wobble! The Chandler wobble is a small motion in the Earth's axis of rotation relative to the Earth's surface, which was discovered by American astronomer Seth Carlo Chandler in 1891. It amounts to 0.7 arcseconds (about 15 meters on the Earth's surface) and has a period of 433 days.

Richard Gross, (geophysicist), worked out that the principal cause of the Chandler wobble is fluctuating pressure on the bottom of the ocean, caused by temperature and salinity changes and wind-driven changes in the circulation of the oceans. He determined this by applying numerical models of the oceans, which have only recently become available through the work of other researchers, to data on the Chandler wobble obtained during the years 1985-1995. Gross calculated that two-thirds of the Chandler wobble is caused by ocean-bottom pressure changes and the remaining one-third by fluctuations in atmospheric pressure. He says that the effect of atmospheric winds and ocean currents on the wobble was minor.

Answer 3

No. They don't represent nearly enough of the earth's mass, and although they may seem ancient to you and me, geologically speaking they are very temporary phenomena!

Answer 4

No...unlike a wheel, the Earth's axis of rotation isn't predetermined by an axle and doesn't need any balancing to remain smooth.

The reason that a wheel needs balancing is that its center of mass isn't necessarily directly in line with the location of the axle. The weights help to "nudge" the center of mass in line with the axle, which stops its tendency to wobble.

Since the Earth doesn't have an axle, it has nothing to "wobble" around; it will naturally be a smooth rotation around its center of mass.

Answer 5

Accounting for oblatness, the earth is 99.99% spherical.  The mountains may stick out as high as a mile or two, but this is virtually nothing.   It is more perfectly rounded (again, accounting for oblatness) than any circle you can draw (even with a stencil).  Any perturbations in the earths movements caused by mountains are insignificant, and easily negated by the laws of physics.

Answer 6

Other Answerers, Please Update Your Knowledge.

Allah says in The Holy Qur'an Chapter#78, Verse# 6-7

6- Have We not made the earth habitable?

7- And the mountains as pegs?

78-The Event, 6-7

A book entitled ‘Earth’ is regarded as a basic

reference textbook on geology in many universities

around the world. One of the authors of this book is

Dr. Frank Press, who was the President of the

Academy of Sciences in the USA for 12 years and

was the Science Advisor to former US President

Jimmy Carter. In this book, he illustrates the

mountain in a wedge-shape and the mountain itself

as a small part of the whole, whose root is deeply

entrenched in the ground.1 According to Dr. Press,

the mountains play an important role in stabilizing

the crust of the earth.

The Qur’an clearly mentions the function of the

mountains in preventing the earth from shaking:

“And We have set on the earth

mountains standing firm,

lest it should shake with them.”

[Al-Qur’an 21:31]2

The Qur’anic descriptions are in perfect agreement

with modern geological data.

Answer 7

Mountains don't make any effect on the earth's rotation, they are simply too small compared to the whole of the earth.

Answer 8

If you reduce the Earth to the size of a billiard ball, the Earth is actually smoother than the billiard ball. So your mountains are just a little blemish on the Earths surface.