Planet Earth, like the other planetary bodies in the Solar System, is constantly rotating on itself. This is how it has been since the beginning of time, so we do not know firsthand what would happen if the Earth stops rotating. However, thanks to scientific knowledge we can speculate on what would happen if this scenario occurred.
The birth of a cosmic neighborhood
About 4.571 million years ago a gravitational collapse occurred in an extremely dense molecular cloud. The phenomenon was so important that it resulted in the birth of a star we now know as the Sun. Then the protoplanetary disk around the stellar body formed large orbs that later hatched as planets.
But the gravitational field generated by the star was such that it has kept the planets revolving around it ever since. Thanks to gravitational interactions, the Earth has been constantly rotating on itself, as well as circling its host star. What we know as rotation and translation movements.
We do not know of another reality apart from this, since they are cycles that determine life on the planet that depends completely on them. The seasons of the year, day and night, are everlasting loops that shape everything we know. This is why the mere idea of the Earth coming to a standstill creates immediate cognitive conflict. Although there is no denying that doubts arise in torrents about what would happen if the Earth stops rotating one day. Taking advantage of scientific knowledge, we can get an idea of the panorama, although we warn that it is not a friendly scenario.
If the earth stops spinning
At the equator the rotation movement of our planet is much faster than at the poles. Around 1,700 kilometers per hour. If the Earth were to stand still, the momentum generated by centrifugal energy and the inertia of motion would send everything on the surface flying eastward. Remember that the planet rotates from west to east.
Rocks, oceans, and even the atmosphere would experience a violent impulse that would instantly trigger earthquakes and tsunamis. The atmosphere would continue to move across the landscapes and generate hurricane-force winds. At the equator things would get terrible and the chances of survival would be reduced to almost 0%. However, at the poles another story would be because having a slower rotation speed, they would be the only place on the planet where there might be survivors.
In the long term, everything we know would be modified. Day and night would go from a duration of 24 hours to 8,760 hours, which is how long it takes the Earth to complete one revolution around the Sun. Fortunately, the chances of such an event happening are almost zero, so we can rest easy. The scenario of a static Earth that stops rotating on itself only lives in the imagination of humans.
It might interest you