February 21, 2013 • 20 mins
Over the last 400 million years, the day has grown longer by two full hours thanks to a slowing of the rotation of the Earth on its axis. While it will be a very long time before it stops spinning altogether, it never hurts to plan. Listen to Chuck and Josh discuss what a still Earth would look like.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
stuff you should know from house stuff Works dot com. Hey,
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chipper and
Cheery Chuck. Chucker's Bryant right across from me. How are
(00:22):
you doing? I'm good man. I'm about to go get
that jar of moonshine for my cubicle. And we've never
done a show where we just drank moonshine the whole time.
I think we should. What better day? I don't think
it's at my desk at home? Oh? Really, do you
have beers still? Or there may be some other there?
I don't know what about. Well, there's a case of
(00:43):
beer that some other dude sent me, like not it
wasn't show related, but it's been sitting there for like
a year. What shiner back? Oh? I got some too,
And then there's a couple of beers from like England,
and then there may be some moonshine. So let's just
get drunk. Okay, So you're feeling good, I'm just getting folks,
(01:04):
we're gonna do that, is what you're saying. Um, Well,
my intro is, uh, you've already pood pooed it. Yeah,
I feel kind of bad about that. Oh, I don't
feel bad. It's pretty much part for the course, buddy,
Are you ready, Chuck? Uh? Many many years ago, roughly
(01:26):
around four eight billion years ago, um, the Earth really
started to forming together from a bunch of dust and
rocks and other dust, so says you, because right, because
the universe was spinning, right, and all these particles were spinning,
and as they came together, forming an accretion from an
(01:47):
incretion disk, they formed the Earth and all other planets obviously, right,
and all of that spin. Thanks to the laws of thermodynamics,
one of them, uh, continued to spin and actually accumulated,
and so the Earth just's spinning. That's why it's spinning,
because it's always been spinning and all of its particles
(02:08):
that make it up have been spinning. So it's spinning
because of the conservation of angular momentum. Right. Yeah. In
Newton's first law of motion, of course, that's what it was.
Not thermodynamics. There is a law of motion, which is
what if an object uh, an object in motion will
remain in that state of motion unless basically someone comes
along and puts the brakes on it. Right, unless something
(02:29):
acts upon it, exactly, and in the vacuum of space,
there's nothing to act upon it to slow the Earth down.
So it's just gonna keep going. And actually the Earth
has slowed in its older age. Four million years ago,
a day uh lasted twenty two hours. Yeah, it's been
slowing consistently over time, right, Yeah, but it's gonna take
a while to stop. I think in four hundred million
(02:51):
years in the future, they think that the day will
be twenty six hours, so to two years. Slowing by
two or two hours a day over four million years,
it's not it's not quick. Well, in four million years,
is there going to be any Earth? I don't know.
That's such a good question. What will we look like.
I don't think it's me It's four million years, that's
(03:13):
my guess. Um. Okay, so the Earth is slowing. We
understand why it's spinning. We understand that it is slowing down.
But what happens if somebody just comes along just stops
it automatically, like just stopped poop stopped. Well, and by
the way, Jerry, that wasn't an edit. Yeah, that's our
signal when we beep, that is a call out to Jerry.
(03:36):
So we're moving very fast, like faster than the speed
of sound, even though it didn't feel like it. Um
So if someone stopped it, those same things that would
happen if you just stopped your car all of a sudden,
or a train stopped all of a sudden, would happen
here on Earth, except it would be much more drastic
because we're spinning much faster. We're spinning in an easterly
direction at about a thousand miles an hour along the equator.
(03:59):
So yeah, if all of a sudden you stop the Earth,
everything that's unattached to the Earth would keep going eastward
about a thousand miles an hour, mass, instantly dead, massive flooding,
you name it, the wind, shock waves, buildings, everything just go.
And you said something that I find kind of interesting,
like when I when I when I started to research
like the Earth's rotation, It's one of those things where
(04:20):
I just assume I know what I'm talking about, and
then the more I looked into I was like, oh, yeah,
there's a lot of little stuff here, like questions like
why don't we feel the fact that we're moving through
space at about a thousand miles an hour and well,
I found the answer because the Earth moves at a
constant speed, the constant rate of rotation. There's no acceleration
(04:41):
or deceleration, which we would feel if that happened. Right,
Why don't we spin off the Earth? Do you know why?
I do? Okay? Here? Because of gravity and the gravitational
poll like, we we want to spin off the Earth.
That's you know, that's in there. But the force of gravity,
or the force that wants to spin us off the
Earth is point three the force of gravity, right, centrifugal
(05:04):
force weigh much more gravity going on than there is
uh the other So and I found that if the
Earth rotated at a rate of eighty minutes, right, it's
spun around on its axis one full time, So one
day was eighty minutes long. That would be fast enough
to overcome the force of gravity, would be thrown off
into space. But we're not going anywhere because that the
(05:27):
Earth is never gonna start speeding up like that. That's
just crazy talk. No, And it's not gonna stop spinning
either anytime soon. But we can still have fun with
this topic. So, say that we were existing right now
as the Earth was really starting to slow down, was
making its last turn. So it did it gradually like
(05:47):
Superman style, right, and then, um, the ecosystems were intact.
Everything was generally intact the moment the Earth stopped spinning
the day the Earth stood still exactly. Yeah, there would
be some really interesting things that happened, like a lot
of are the geography of this planet. I took for
granted until I read this article, which really opened my eyes.
(06:10):
So what what what? What are some of the things
that would happen if they're just stop spinning. Uh? Well,
seismologists think that it would set off a massive chain
of super earthquakes because they suspect that UM, the rotation
the Earth, plays a big role in the movement of
the tectonic plates. So they seismologists think that you know,
(06:32):
we would all be dead because of massive, massive earthquakes. Okay,
we'd probably be dead for a lot more reasons which
we can explore, but yes, diverse. Yeah, because think about it,
that that spinning Earth, the centrivigal force of the Earth
um is so strong that um it it basically keeps
(06:54):
the oceans in place. It creates a bulge around the equator,
Like the Earth is not a perfect sphere. Um it's
bulged at the middle, and it's that's because of its spin,
and that bulge actually brings the world's oceans towards the equator.
In the southern hemisphere they moved north. In the northern hemisphere,
they moved south. But it's being pulled towards the middle
(07:14):
of the Earth. There's spare tire. So if it stops
spinning all of a sudden, the world's oceans would go
towards the poles. Yeah, like quickly. It would be pretty
cool to see, I guess not if you're at the poles.
Did you see a map of what it would look like. Yeah,
like basically a supercontinent in the center on both sides
(07:35):
of the equator. Yeah, like all the way around the globe,
and two big oceans, one on top and one on
the bottom. Yeah, and the one on the top of
the Arctic would actually be about a thousand meters deeper,
not because there'd be more water there, but because the
Antarctic basin is bigger deeper. That makes sense, so the
water would be shallower by comparison. But yeah, I was
(07:56):
looking so like Chicago would be just under the north
shore of the Northern Hemisphere's ocean. Um and from that
point down the United States would be largely intact. All
the way into the Caribbean South it would just be land.
It's pretty neat, good looking map. I love freaky weird maps. Yeah,
(08:19):
like the early maps. Those were a little weird. There's
a blog called um unusual Maps, I think maps. I
can't remember what's called, but it's just like this blog
about strange maps. It's pretty neat. I used to collect maps,
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I didn't have a ton.
I had like fifteen or sixteen like cool map posters.
(08:40):
Nice to still have a few of them, but I
think they went the way of the Dodo in my
house where they like scholastic foldouts. No, like you know,
some were like you know, civil War map or the
Earth at this point map, or you know, just very
none of them. We're just straight up. I think I
had one straight up map. Um, so what else would
happen once that? What happened is the uh? And Robert
(09:03):
Lamb wrote this, didn't he No, Jonathan at a berry?
That's right, at a berry at a berry. Good job.
He says that it will take a whole year to
pull off what the Earth does in a day, so
one part of the world would be a blazing, scorching desert,
and then one part of the Earth would be a barren,
(09:24):
frozen wasteland half a year, half half the year. And
that's because the since the Earth rotates on its access
in about twenty four hours a little under, I think, um,
if it stopped doing that, it would still move around
the Sun, it just wouldn't spin on its axis. So
I figured this out. If you're having trouble visualizing it,
like I did, put your thumb in front of your
(09:47):
face out a little bit so that your thumbnail is
facing you, and then pretend that the Sun is in
between you and your thumb, and your thumb is the Earth,
and you just rotated around so that your thumbnails facing
you all the time. But it's going around the Sun,
and you'll see that at any given point, right, it's
the this part of the Earth is facing a different
(10:07):
part of the sun the thumbnail. So there would be seasons,
but there'd be four seasons, and they would be very different.
The line demarcating them would be really different. And when
you went from winter to summer, eventually you would have
nothing but sunlight and then nothing but dark, depending on
the temperature swing would be huge. So what that means is, um,
(10:31):
we'd probably have a really difficult time propagating with with
husbandry in general. And you don't mean sex, you're talking
with plants and animals. I'm not sure what you mean.
They're propagating with husbandry sounded like a euphemism. No, just
farming and animals. All that would be more difficult, if
not impossible, Um to grow crops, you know, for or
(10:53):
you know, maybe you grow them during the sunny parts
of the year. What you can grow and then store.
But we'd be in bad shape. I think we've very
bad as far as that goes. But botanically speaking, we
are a pretty uh, pretty quick witted species, so we
could possibly overcome it technologically maybe you know, I'll bet
we'd have a really good sunglasses. Yeah, yeah, that's true
(11:13):
and coats. Um what else would happen anything? Uh, Well,
the magnetic field, well gravity, I got something on gravity here.
Gravity would be changed, which is not in the article,
but um, it would change significantly if it stopped spinning
because uh, centrogal force of course, what you're talking about
contributes to that gravitational field, and it wouldn't exist any longer,
(11:36):
so the gravitational fiel would be strongest at the poles
instead of at the equator, and who knows what that
would do. You'd just be a lot heavier at the poles,
right you think, maybe, Okay, we'd also lose a very
interesting thing called the Coriolis effect. Yeah, my favorite, which
you know, um, supposedly with the Coriolis effect, if you're
(11:57):
in the Northern Hemisphere, if you flush the toilet, the
water goes down the drain clockwise and in the Northern
Hemisphere county clockwise. That it's not true. It's all plumbing,
it's all the design of the drain, the Coriolis effected.
There has nothing to do with what part of the
Earth you're in. It's no, it has nothing to do
with like the drain, the supposedly the Coreolis effect, the
fact that the Earth is spinning faster at the equator
(12:20):
than it is at the poles. Uh. It has long
been tapped as a reason for whirlpooles. They're saying, No,
that's probably if it's if you're talking about a drain,
it's the angle of the drain, it's the design of
the drain, it's the water rushing in when you flush
the toilet has nothing. That's an old wives tale. But
there's a coreal Coreoles effect. It's just not quite as interesting. Basically,
(12:41):
it says that if you leave the north pole and
fly toward the equator towards a certain market the equator,
if you're going a straight line, you're gonna miss your
mark because there are spinning and it's spinning faster at
the equator than it is at the pole Coreoli. It's
a curve like a Yeah, you have to basically correct longitudinally,
(13:01):
okay um to hit your target. Like you just can't
find a straight line from the north pole of the
equator if you're trying to get to a certain spot.
That's the Coriolis effect. Nice, I guess unless I'm missing something.
It seems kind of basic. Uh yeah, that's kind of
basic once you wrap your head around it. Uh. There
are some things that are slowing the earth down. Like
you said, the days are longer now than they used
(13:25):
to be. Uh, yes, they used to be what twenty
two hours you said fion years ago? Yeah, okay, um,
so we are slowing down. There is uh tidal friction
and the tide drags two point three milliseconds on each
century every hundred years. So that's pretty slow, right, But
(13:45):
it adds up over time, surely, of course it does.
Um weather can affect it. Two wins can actually slow
it down. Earthquakes can redistribute the mass and actually speed up.
Didn't it speed up in the earthquake in Japan? Yeah?
I think by um one point eight microseconds that the
Earth's day, it's solar day, was accelerated because that earthquake
(14:07):
was so massive. Nothing we could notice. What about magnetic
field though, That's okay, so what I don't fully get.
So with the magnetic field there, we're not quite sure
why Earth or how Earth has a magnetic field. But
the prevailing theory is that because of this coreolis effect
in the center of the earth, um whirlpools are created
(14:29):
of molten iron, and as this molten iron kind of
moves around informs these world pools that actually generates an
electrical field, an electrical current, which in turn generates a
magnetic field. So we have this magnetic field. We think
that's how we have it. But we also have long
suspected that the magnetic field protects the Earth from solar winds,
which are positively charged ions from the Sun that travel
(14:51):
about a million miles an hour off of the Sun
toward us, and they're about a million degrees celsius. And
we long thought that it protected our atmosphere from be
stripped of the ions that we need. Then we started
looking at other planets and um that don't have any
magnetic field, because I think it's just the Earth and
the Sun in our solar system are the only ones
with magnetic fields. UM. And we found that they lose
(15:13):
ions at about the same rate that our atmosphere loses ions.
So we don't know what the magnetic field is doing.
But I did come across this one interesting fact. We
lose about a ton of atmosphere a day, really yep,
and and mostly in the form of water vapor. So
the Earth is drying out very slowly. Wow. Ye boys,
So we're slowing down, We're drying out, and in four
(15:36):
million years will all be toasted. Yeah. That's pretty much
the long and short of this. And what what We
did a podcast on what would the Earth look like
in different inter roles in the future, and I think
we eventually landed on ultimately destruction and if we're even
here any longer. Yeah, exactly. We'll use the Earth up.
It's probably where we landed. Yeah, I think you're right. Well,
(15:57):
good going, Chuck. Let's hear for Chuck everybody. UM, do
you have anything else? I do not, sir. If you
want to learn more about the Earth standing still, go
to how stuff works dot com and type in earth
um and it will bring up some pretty cool articles
and probably an entire channel. There's Earth science just fascinates me. Yeah,
(16:18):
me too, I said, search bars somewhere in there, which
means it's time for a listener mail. Uh. You know
you called out for how we helped you in your
life emails. We got one from Rachel in Portland, Portland. Um,
you guys, Uh, you guys have helped me through some
of the toughest times in my life. I've shortened the
(16:38):
beginning and August I moved from a small town in
Mississippi to attend the University of Portland in Oregon. The
transition was rough, Needless to say, I did not handle
it well. I started smoking again, I had trouble focusing
on in attending classes, and I could tell that I
wasn't settling well or making friends. On top of all that,
my three year relationship with my high school sweetheart fell
(17:00):
apart because at the distance and stress of us both
beginning university. I began to relapse into depression, something I've
struggled with off and on for five years. Found myself
unable to listen to music, even because every song I
heard made me so sad, A one of those heartbreak
dates when you just sit around and like listen to
the radio and cry. I downloaded your podcast to listen
(17:23):
to as I walked to and front classes, and while
I did homework. Didn't notice at first, but every time
your podcast was on it made me laugh. I'd feel
a little bit better. About halfway through the semester, I
found the courage to seek help and visit the campus
health center for therapy and antidepressants. I am now my
second semester of college with a three point nine for
g p A. I have a few great friends, and
(17:44):
I'm even dating someone new. I love my school and
I love the city of Portland. I feel as if
your podcast servan integral part of helping me make the
transition from home to here. I've learned and laugh with y'all,
and now and then a southern draw will sneak into
one of your voices and make me nostalgic with this out.
It may sound silly, but I feel I'll come to
(18:05):
know you guys. I really want to thank you for
helping me through such a hard time. Rachel eighteen in Portland.
Thanks Rachel, it's awesome. I'm glad to hear you're doing better. Yeah.
I had a rough first few weeks of college. I
think a lot of people do. And uh, I think
my advice is to just stick it out and before
(18:25):
you know it, you're gonna be loving it. I remember
my parents telling me that when I went off the camp,
oh yeah, even like camp. I did not like camp.
Did you like going off the college? Yeah, that's fine,
you're probably ready with that. Yeah, I was. I freaked
out because I at the last minute, I tried to
change to go to Georgia Tech because my brother was there,
and I was basically scared. I was like, I just
(18:47):
want to go to school with my brother, and uh
it didn't Uh it was too late to get the
application in and so I was like, all right, I
guess I'm going to Georgia by myself. And uh it
ended up being the greatest thing ever. But I'm glad
stuck it out, you know the rest of the story. Yeah,
it is true. I mean, like, you know, just hanging
in there and being brave, even when it feels like
that's the worst thing to do. Often it's it's often
(19:10):
the best thing to do. And six years later and
I had a college diploma and a lot of friends
for life. It's good, chuckers. Uh, let's see. If you
have a great story about solar wind or how we've
helped you or call ite or whatever we want to
hear about it, you can find us on Twitter right
s y SK podcast. I feel like a lot of
(19:31):
you aren't getting that s y SK podcast. It's a
great Twitter feed. Yeah, Josh is the Twitter master. We
have a great Facebook page that Chuck helms Facebook dot
com slash stuff. You should know. People love that. You
can send us an email, which is fine. Uh. That's
Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com and everybody, seriously, stop
(19:51):
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it how stuff works. Dot com m brought to you
(20:18):
by Toyota. Let's Go Places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
stuff you should know from house stuff Works dot com. Hey,
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chipper and
Cheery Chuck. Chucker's Bryant right across from me. How are
(00:22):
you doing? I'm good man. I'm about to go get
that jar of moonshine for my cubicle. And we've never
done a show where we just drank moonshine the whole time.
I think we should. What better day? I don't think
it's at my desk at home? Oh? Really, do you
have beers still? Or there may be some other there?
I don't know what about. Well, there's a case of
(00:43):
beer that some other dude sent me, like not it
wasn't show related, but it's been sitting there for like
a year. What shiner back? Oh? I got some too,
And then there's a couple of beers from like England,
and then there may be some moonshine. So let's just
get drunk. Okay, So you're feeling good, I'm just getting folks,
(01:04):
we're gonna do that, is what you're saying. Um, Well,
my intro is, uh, you've already pood pooed it. Yeah,
I feel kind of bad about that. Oh, I don't
feel bad. It's pretty much part for the course, buddy,
Are you ready, Chuck? Uh? Many many years ago, roughly
(01:26):
around four eight billion years ago, um, the Earth really
started to forming together from a bunch of dust and
rocks and other dust, so says you, because right, because
the universe was spinning, right, and all these particles were spinning,
and as they came together, forming an accretion from an
(01:47):
incretion disk, they formed the Earth and all other planets obviously, right,
and all of that spin. Thanks to the laws of thermodynamics,
one of them, uh, continued to spin and actually accumulated,
and so the Earth just's spinning. That's why it's spinning,
because it's always been spinning and all of its particles
(02:08):
that make it up have been spinning. So it's spinning
because of the conservation of angular momentum. Right. Yeah. In
Newton's first law of motion, of course, that's what it was.
Not thermodynamics. There is a law of motion, which is
what if an object uh, an object in motion will
remain in that state of motion unless basically someone comes
along and puts the brakes on it. Right, unless something
(02:29):
acts upon it, exactly, and in the vacuum of space,
there's nothing to act upon it to slow the Earth down.
So it's just gonna keep going. And actually the Earth
has slowed in its older age. Four million years ago,
a day uh lasted twenty two hours. Yeah, it's been
slowing consistently over time, right, Yeah, but it's gonna take
a while to stop. I think in four hundred million
(02:51):
years in the future, they think that the day will
be twenty six hours, so to two years. Slowing by
two or two hours a day over four million years,
it's not it's not quick. Well, in four million years,
is there going to be any Earth? I don't know.
That's such a good question. What will we look like.
I don't think it's me It's four million years, that's
(03:13):
my guess. Um. Okay, so the Earth is slowing. We
understand why it's spinning. We understand that it is slowing down.
But what happens if somebody just comes along just stops
it automatically, like just stopped poop stopped. Well, and by
the way, Jerry, that wasn't an edit. Yeah, that's our
signal when we beep, that is a call out to Jerry.
(03:36):
So we're moving very fast, like faster than the speed
of sound, even though it didn't feel like it. Um
So if someone stopped it, those same things that would
happen if you just stopped your car all of a sudden,
or a train stopped all of a sudden, would happen
here on Earth, except it would be much more drastic
because we're spinning much faster. We're spinning in an easterly
direction at about a thousand miles an hour along the equator.
(03:59):
So yeah, if all of a sudden you stop the Earth,
everything that's unattached to the Earth would keep going eastward
about a thousand miles an hour, mass, instantly dead, massive flooding,
you name it, the wind, shock waves, buildings, everything just go.
And you said something that I find kind of interesting,
like when I when I when I started to research
like the Earth's rotation, It's one of those things where
(04:20):
I just assume I know what I'm talking about, and
then the more I looked into I was like, oh, yeah,
there's a lot of little stuff here, like questions like
why don't we feel the fact that we're moving through
space at about a thousand miles an hour and well,
I found the answer because the Earth moves at a
constant speed, the constant rate of rotation. There's no acceleration
(04:41):
or deceleration, which we would feel if that happened. Right,
Why don't we spin off the Earth? Do you know why?
I do? Okay? Here? Because of gravity and the gravitational
poll like, we we want to spin off the Earth.
That's you know, that's in there. But the force of gravity,
or the force that wants to spin us off the
Earth is point three the force of gravity, right, centrifugal
(05:04):
force weigh much more gravity going on than there is
uh the other So and I found that if the
Earth rotated at a rate of eighty minutes, right, it's
spun around on its axis one full time, So one
day was eighty minutes long. That would be fast enough
to overcome the force of gravity, would be thrown off
into space. But we're not going anywhere because that the
(05:27):
Earth is never gonna start speeding up like that. That's
just crazy talk. No, And it's not gonna stop spinning
either anytime soon. But we can still have fun with
this topic. So, say that we were existing right now
as the Earth was really starting to slow down, was
making its last turn. So it did it gradually like
(05:47):
Superman style, right, and then, um, the ecosystems were intact.
Everything was generally intact the moment the Earth stopped spinning
the day the Earth stood still exactly. Yeah, there would
be some really interesting things that happened, like a lot
of are the geography of this planet. I took for
granted until I read this article, which really opened my eyes.
(06:10):
So what what what? What are some of the things
that would happen if they're just stop spinning. Uh? Well,
seismologists think that it would set off a massive chain
of super earthquakes because they suspect that UM, the rotation
the Earth, plays a big role in the movement of
the tectonic plates. So they seismologists think that you know,
(06:32):
we would all be dead because of massive, massive earthquakes. Okay,
we'd probably be dead for a lot more reasons which
we can explore, but yes, diverse. Yeah, because think about it,
that that spinning Earth, the centrivigal force of the Earth
um is so strong that um it it basically keeps
(06:54):
the oceans in place. It creates a bulge around the equator,
Like the Earth is not a perfect sphere. Um it's
bulged at the middle, and it's that's because of its spin,
and that bulge actually brings the world's oceans towards the equator.
In the southern hemisphere they moved north. In the northern hemisphere,
they moved south. But it's being pulled towards the middle
(07:14):
of the Earth. There's spare tire. So if it stops
spinning all of a sudden, the world's oceans would go
towards the poles. Yeah, like quickly. It would be pretty
cool to see, I guess not if you're at the poles.
Did you see a map of what it would look like. Yeah,
like basically a supercontinent in the center on both sides
(07:35):
of the equator. Yeah, like all the way around the globe,
and two big oceans, one on top and one on
the bottom. Yeah, and the one on the top of
the Arctic would actually be about a thousand meters deeper,
not because there'd be more water there, but because the
Antarctic basin is bigger deeper. That makes sense, so the
water would be shallower by comparison. But yeah, I was
(07:56):
looking so like Chicago would be just under the north
shore of the Northern Hemisphere's ocean. Um and from that
point down the United States would be largely intact. All
the way into the Caribbean South it would just be land.
It's pretty neat, good looking map. I love freaky weird maps. Yeah,
(08:19):
like the early maps. Those were a little weird. There's
a blog called um unusual Maps, I think maps. I
can't remember what's called, but it's just like this blog
about strange maps. It's pretty neat. I used to collect maps,
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I didn't have a ton.
I had like fifteen or sixteen like cool map posters.
(08:40):
Nice to still have a few of them, but I
think they went the way of the Dodo in my
house where they like scholastic foldouts. No, like you know,
some were like you know, civil War map or the
Earth at this point map, or you know, just very
none of them. We're just straight up. I think I
had one straight up map. Um, so what else would
happen once that? What happened is the uh? And Robert
(09:03):
Lamb wrote this, didn't he No, Jonathan at a berry?
That's right, at a berry at a berry. Good job.
He says that it will take a whole year to
pull off what the Earth does in a day, so
one part of the world would be a blazing, scorching desert,
and then one part of the Earth would be a barren,
(09:24):
frozen wasteland half a year, half half the year. And
that's because the since the Earth rotates on its access
in about twenty four hours a little under, I think, um,
if it stopped doing that, it would still move around
the Sun, it just wouldn't spin on its axis. So
I figured this out. If you're having trouble visualizing it,
like I did, put your thumb in front of your
(09:47):
face out a little bit so that your thumbnail is
facing you, and then pretend that the Sun is in
between you and your thumb, and your thumb is the Earth,
and you just rotated around so that your thumbnails facing
you all the time. But it's going around the Sun,
and you'll see that at any given point, right, it's
the this part of the Earth is facing a different
(10:07):
part of the sun the thumbnail. So there would be seasons,
but there'd be four seasons, and they would be very different.
The line demarcating them would be really different. And when
you went from winter to summer, eventually you would have
nothing but sunlight and then nothing but dark, depending on
the temperature swing would be huge. So what that means is, um,
(10:31):
we'd probably have a really difficult time propagating with with
husbandry in general. And you don't mean sex, you're talking
with plants and animals. I'm not sure what you mean.
They're propagating with husbandry sounded like a euphemism. No, just
farming and animals. All that would be more difficult, if
not impossible, Um to grow crops, you know, for or
(10:53):
you know, maybe you grow them during the sunny parts
of the year. What you can grow and then store.
But we'd be in bad shape. I think we've very
bad as far as that goes. But botanically speaking, we
are a pretty uh, pretty quick witted species, so we
could possibly overcome it technologically maybe you know, I'll bet
we'd have a really good sunglasses. Yeah, yeah, that's true
(11:13):
and coats. Um what else would happen anything? Uh, Well,
the magnetic field, well gravity, I got something on gravity here.
Gravity would be changed, which is not in the article,
but um, it would change significantly if it stopped spinning
because uh, centrogal force of course, what you're talking about
contributes to that gravitational field, and it wouldn't exist any longer,
(11:36):
so the gravitational fiel would be strongest at the poles
instead of at the equator, and who knows what that
would do. You'd just be a lot heavier at the poles,
right you think, maybe, Okay, we'd also lose a very
interesting thing called the Coriolis effect. Yeah, my favorite, which
you know, um, supposedly with the Coriolis effect, if you're
(11:57):
in the Northern Hemisphere, if you flush the toilet, the
water goes down the drain clockwise and in the Northern
Hemisphere county clockwise. That it's not true. It's all plumbing,
it's all the design of the drain, the Coriolis effected.
There has nothing to do with what part of the
Earth you're in. It's no, it has nothing to do
with like the drain, the supposedly the Coreolis effect, the
fact that the Earth is spinning faster at the equator
(12:20):
than it is at the poles. Uh. It has long
been tapped as a reason for whirlpooles. They're saying, No,
that's probably if it's if you're talking about a drain,
it's the angle of the drain, it's the design of
the drain, it's the water rushing in when you flush
the toilet has nothing. That's an old wives tale. But
there's a coreal Coreoles effect. It's just not quite as interesting. Basically,
(12:41):
it says that if you leave the north pole and
fly toward the equator towards a certain market the equator,
if you're going a straight line, you're gonna miss your
mark because there are spinning and it's spinning faster at
the equator than it is at the pole Coreoli. It's
a curve like a Yeah, you have to basically correct longitudinally,
(13:01):
okay um to hit your target. Like you just can't
find a straight line from the north pole of the
equator if you're trying to get to a certain spot.
That's the Coriolis effect. Nice, I guess unless I'm missing something.
It seems kind of basic. Uh yeah, that's kind of
basic once you wrap your head around it. Uh. There
are some things that are slowing the earth down. Like
you said, the days are longer now than they used
(13:25):
to be. Uh, yes, they used to be what twenty
two hours you said fion years ago? Yeah, okay, um,
so we are slowing down. There is uh tidal friction
and the tide drags two point three milliseconds on each
century every hundred years. So that's pretty slow, right, But
(13:45):
it adds up over time, surely, of course it does.
Um weather can affect it. Two wins can actually slow
it down. Earthquakes can redistribute the mass and actually speed up.
Didn't it speed up in the earthquake in Japan? Yeah?
I think by um one point eight microseconds that the
Earth's day, it's solar day, was accelerated because that earthquake
(14:07):
was so massive. Nothing we could notice. What about magnetic
field though, That's okay, so what I don't fully get.
So with the magnetic field there, we're not quite sure
why Earth or how Earth has a magnetic field. But
the prevailing theory is that because of this coreolis effect
in the center of the earth, um whirlpools are created
(14:29):
of molten iron, and as this molten iron kind of
moves around informs these world pools that actually generates an
electrical field, an electrical current, which in turn generates a
magnetic field. So we have this magnetic field. We think
that's how we have it. But we also have long
suspected that the magnetic field protects the Earth from solar winds,
which are positively charged ions from the Sun that travel
(14:51):
about a million miles an hour off of the Sun
toward us, and they're about a million degrees celsius. And
we long thought that it protected our atmosphere from be
stripped of the ions that we need. Then we started
looking at other planets and um that don't have any
magnetic field, because I think it's just the Earth and
the Sun in our solar system are the only ones
with magnetic fields. UM. And we found that they lose
(15:13):
ions at about the same rate that our atmosphere loses ions.
So we don't know what the magnetic field is doing.
But I did come across this one interesting fact. We
lose about a ton of atmosphere a day, really yep,
and and mostly in the form of water vapor. So
the Earth is drying out very slowly. Wow. Ye boys,
So we're slowing down, We're drying out, and in four
(15:36):
million years will all be toasted. Yeah. That's pretty much
the long and short of this. And what what We
did a podcast on what would the Earth look like
in different inter roles in the future, and I think
we eventually landed on ultimately destruction and if we're even
here any longer. Yeah, exactly. We'll use the Earth up.
It's probably where we landed. Yeah, I think you're right. Well,
(15:57):
good going, Chuck. Let's hear for Chuck everybody. UM, do
you have anything else? I do not, sir. If you
want to learn more about the Earth standing still, go
to how stuff works dot com and type in earth
um and it will bring up some pretty cool articles
and probably an entire channel. There's Earth science just fascinates me. Yeah,
(16:18):
me too, I said, search bars somewhere in there, which
means it's time for a listener mail. Uh. You know
you called out for how we helped you in your
life emails. We got one from Rachel in Portland, Portland. Um,
you guys, Uh, you guys have helped me through some
of the toughest times in my life. I've shortened the
(16:38):
beginning and August I moved from a small town in
Mississippi to attend the University of Portland in Oregon. The
transition was rough, Needless to say, I did not handle
it well. I started smoking again, I had trouble focusing
on in attending classes, and I could tell that I
wasn't settling well or making friends. On top of all that,
my three year relationship with my high school sweetheart fell
(17:00):
apart because at the distance and stress of us both
beginning university. I began to relapse into depression, something I've
struggled with off and on for five years. Found myself
unable to listen to music, even because every song I
heard made me so sad, A one of those heartbreak
dates when you just sit around and like listen to
the radio and cry. I downloaded your podcast to listen
(17:23):
to as I walked to and front classes, and while
I did homework. Didn't notice at first, but every time
your podcast was on it made me laugh. I'd feel
a little bit better. About halfway through the semester, I
found the courage to seek help and visit the campus
health center for therapy and antidepressants. I am now my
second semester of college with a three point nine for
g p A. I have a few great friends, and
(17:44):
I'm even dating someone new. I love my school and
I love the city of Portland. I feel as if
your podcast servan integral part of helping me make the
transition from home to here. I've learned and laugh with y'all,
and now and then a southern draw will sneak into
one of your voices and make me nostalgic with this out.
It may sound silly, but I feel I'll come to
(18:05):
know you guys. I really want to thank you for
helping me through such a hard time. Rachel eighteen in Portland.
Thanks Rachel, it's awesome. I'm glad to hear you're doing better. Yeah.
I had a rough first few weeks of college. I
think a lot of people do. And uh, I think
my advice is to just stick it out and before
(18:25):
you know it, you're gonna be loving it. I remember
my parents telling me that when I went off the camp,
oh yeah, even like camp. I did not like camp.
Did you like going off the college? Yeah, that's fine,
you're probably ready with that. Yeah, I was. I freaked
out because I at the last minute, I tried to
change to go to Georgia Tech because my brother was there,
and I was basically scared. I was like, I just
(18:47):
want to go to school with my brother, and uh
it didn't Uh it was too late to get the
application in and so I was like, all right, I
guess I'm going to Georgia by myself. And uh it
ended up being the greatest thing ever. But I'm glad
stuck it out, you know the rest of the story. Yeah,
it is true. I mean, like, you know, just hanging
in there and being brave, even when it feels like
that's the worst thing to do. Often it's it's often
(19:10):
the best thing to do. And six years later and
I had a college diploma and a lot of friends
for life. It's good, chuckers. Uh, let's see. If you
have a great story about solar wind or how we've
helped you or call ite or whatever we want to
hear about it, you can find us on Twitter right
s y SK podcast. I feel like a lot of
(19:31):
you aren't getting that s y SK podcast. It's a
great Twitter feed. Yeah, Josh is the Twitter master. We
have a great Facebook page that Chuck helms Facebook dot
com slash stuff. You should know. People love that. You
can send us an email, which is fine. Uh. That's
Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com and everybody, seriously, stop
(19:51):
what you're doing right now. Go to the home of
Josh and Chuck on the web. It's our very own website.
It's fun. It's called stuff. You should oh dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because
it how stuff works. Dot com m brought to you
(20:18):
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