this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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No Stupid Questions

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We just watched the Futurama episodes where alien cats stopped the Earth's rotation, and they fixed it by making it rotate in the opposite direction.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Regardless of how fast or slow you reversed the direction. Pretty much every weather pattern and ocean current on the surface of the planet would be thrown into a massive calamity. The Corolis effect and momentum imparted to surface fluids around our rotating ball is a huge, huge deal with weather flow, like the "jet stream". It directs how storm systems (the flow of water that all life depends on) form and track and which typical track they take as the rotation of the earth is constantly deflecting them. There would be huge, unending storm systems as existing patterns now crashed head on into new ones, with storm fronts spanning entire continents. Even after the storms subsided and it settled into a new normal after 20, 30, maybe 50 years... agricultural breadbaskets would be either destroyed, completely inhospitable to their original crops, or stranded in drought. And human civilization would likely fall with them.

[–] Bayz0r 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Thank
I dont of the science English good

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] sznowicki 7 points 1 year ago

Good agree done

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it's a french scientist's name

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I'll never forgive the french!

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lois Lane would be resurrected and unburied by rocks if there had been an earthquake caused by a nuclear strike shortly before this happened.

[–] grabyourmotherskeys 12 points 1 year ago

We should assume that has happened.

[–] dhork 3 points 1 year ago

Didn't they make a documentary about this?

[–] JJROKCZ 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

We all die, a lot us rapidly when the water keeps moving across the rock that just stopped and super tsunamis a good portion of the planet. The rest of us die slowly as the weather patterns are ruined for likely decades or centuries and we starve due to crop failures and the fact that the worldwide logistics we depend on is forever gone.

Edit: actually I thought some more, if it’s sudden then we’re all crushed by flying into the air into stuff at 1000 miles an hour when the rotation stops. If it’s gradual then we all starve since the weather is ruined

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You forgot about air. If the planet suddenly rotates in the other direction, it would level everything, and the probably turn the planet into a molten marble from the friction.

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[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 17 points 1 year ago

Lois Lane would come back to life

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Randall Munroe made an xkcd about this. It's not on his website unfortunately, but someone else uploaded it. I would recommend using a adblocker though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But OP asked a different question. Not what happens when earth stops spinning but what happens when earth spins in the other direction.

[–] FrozenCorgi 11 points 1 year ago

The answer is largely the same if you make the same assumptions though, just roughly twice as bad because not only does the earth stop and everything not attached goes yeet, but everything attached starts moving just as fast as you in the opposite direction

[–] BilboBargains 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Time goes backwards and I get to eat that cake I had last week?

[–] NeoNachtwaechter 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A week is too long. Before you can eat it again backwards, you have to push it up your rear end...

[–] MeekerThanBeaker 8 points 1 year ago

Good news, everyone!

[–] MrNesser 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You had it last week it has to back in first

[–] irreticent 6 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Imagine reversing every bathroom break you've had in your life. "Hang on I gotta run to the restroom and conjure up a poop from the sewer"

Imagine people casually walking into the restroom and then coming back out and running away in a sweaty panic with diarrhea

[–] Deestan 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It changes the way stars appear to move for us. Astrology teachings would have to do a full 360 degree turn to retain their accuracy.

[–] Synthead 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] Deestan 10 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

This comment gave me the motivation to turn my life around and do a full 360.

[–] qooqie 11 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I can’t say this with any authority, but I think the biggest effect would be in weather patterns and the subsequent downstream effects of having different weather.

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[–] NeoNachtwaechter 9 points 1 year ago

The earth's magnetic field would probably 'follow' and change it's direction. But only a while later and very slowly. During the change, that would leave us without a magnetic field for some time. Then we have lots of cosmic rays hitting us, damaging some of the life on eath.

[–] HonoraryMancunian 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Only a change in rotational speed would be bad. If earth were to rotate in the opposite direction since the beginning it would behave just like today.

[–] EatYouWell 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That was my thought. The only major change I could see happening (besides the cataclysmic events from the change) is the direction of sunrise/sunset.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Exactly

Proof: define Antarctica as North. Now earth is rotating in the other direction.

[–] Alteon 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Need more info. Does the earth immediately stop spinning and start spinning in the opposite direction? Or does it gradually stop over an arbitrary amount of time and reverse directions? Haven't seen the episode....

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

In the episode it had stopped for a while first, then they slowly spun it up.

[–] MudSkipperKisser 6 points 1 year ago

I don’t really know but based on the answers here this is the disaster movie I need next

[–] ivenoidea 6 points 1 year ago

It spins the other way.

[–] Crisps 4 points 1 year ago

Everybody would fall over.

[–] m3t00 3 points 1 year ago

Nothing. Only have to swap N-S poles and East becomes West. 💈 🧭

[–] morphballganon 3 points 1 year ago

If it happened suddenly, there would be massive tidal waves on western coasts.

The sun would rise in the west and set in the east. Timezones would be backward. People in different areas would have oddly desynchronized sunlight exposure relative to the time on their clocks. For example, if this happened at sunset for you, the sun would rise first from the east and set in the west, then rise again from the west and set in the east. You'd be halfway through a double day at the moment of switching. Other people would have a double night.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nothing if it does a flip first.

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