What Would Happen If the Earth Stood Still?

Whiplash

• If the Earth suddenly ground to a halt and stopped rotating on its axis, the most immediate effect would be that everything on its surface would be thrown east at up to 1000 miles per hour! This is much like what happens the brakes slam in a car. The speed would be lower the closer you were to the poles, as the closer to the axis you go the lower the speed of the rotation. This would not only toss people, animals and objects across the Earth at a fatal velocity, it would also cause massive tidal waves, as the water is suddenly forced around the globe.

Endless Days

• If the Earth stopped spinning on its axis then we would no longer have day and night as we know it. Instead, each point on the globe would experience six months in a row of day and six months of night as the Earth's orbit around the Sun presented one face to the Sun and then the other. This would devastate photosynthesizing plant life and thus most animal life would be destroyed. For a period, detritivores such as fungus could continue living off of dead matter and animals might feed on these.

Weight Change

• Less dramatically, the cessation of spinning would remove the centrifugal force that acts on everything on the Earth's surface, pulling it outwards against gravity. This would cause the weight of everything to increase very slightly, most noticeably at the equator where the speed of the rotation and hence the force is highest. However, the loss of centrifugal force would also stop squeezing the earth into an ellipse shape and allow it to become a perfect sphere. This would redistribute the Earth's mass from the equator towards the poles, canceling out the influence of the loss of centrifugal force.

Magnetic Wind Down

• The Earth's magnetic field is generated by the sloshing of its liquid metal core. This has an effect similar to that of a dynamo and generates the North and South magnetic poles. If the Earth stopped spinning this would cease to occur and the magnetic poles would disappear. This would not only make orienteering a much more frustrating sport but would mean that the Earth is no longer shielded from the radiation of cosmic rays, as the magnetic field would no longer be drawing them towards the poles. That would mean no more northern lights and a lot more radiation.