In this article, I delve into the question: What if the Earth stopped spinning? 

Most people don’t think about how important Earth’s rotation really is. However, it is vital for life in a variety of ways. So, naturally, I came up with this question.

It turns out that it would end in more than an infinitely long day. It would end in the destruction of almost all life on Earth except a few organisms (again, tardigrades) and the face of the Earth being liberated from all signs of humanity.

Earth’s rotation is a silent helper that controls everything from algae to weather patterns. 

In this article, I delve into the question: What if the Earth stopped spinning? 

Most people don’t think about how important Earth’s rotation really is. However, it is vital for life in a variety of ways. So, naturally, I came up with this question.

It turns out that it would end in more than an infinitely long day. It would end in the destruction of almost all life on Earth except a few organisms (again, tardigrades) and the face of the Earth being liberated from all signs of humanity.

Earth’s rotation is a silent helper that controls everything from algae to weather patterns. 

This life-giving rotation, however crucial, is not felt by us. After all, for thousands of years, humans thought everything moved around the Earth! The reason for this is that we are not only moving at a constant speed, but everything is moving at the same speed. This case is similar to when someone is driving on a highway at a constant speed parallel to someone driving the same speed. 

This life-giving rotation, however crucial, is not felt by us. After all, for thousands of years, humans thought everything moved around the Earth! The reason for this is that we are not only moving at a constant speed, but everything is moving at the same speed. This case is similar to when someone is driving on a highway at a constant speed parallel to someone driving the same speed. 

Firstly, the moment the Earth stopped, that change would soon become apparent. The air would continue going at 1674 Kph (the equatorial rotational velocity of the Earth) which would wreak all sorts of havoc. To get an idea of how fast this is, the fastest wind ever to be recorded was 512 KpH in a tornado in Oklahoma. It caused houses to collapse and cattle to be lifted into the sky. The fastest non tornadic wind was only a 408 KpH wind that only lasted a few seconds over the Barrow Islands of Australia. 

1674 kph winds would be around 1.35 times as fast as the speed of sound. These velocities would mean anything that would pose the slightest resistance would be launched at extreme velocities into the air.

If you knew these winds were coming, where would you try to hide—and do you think anything could survive outside?

Even more devastating than the winds, the oceans would unleash their own fury. The oceans would also have the same velocity as the rotation, but being much heavier and having more kinetic energy would not just cause floods, but would create waves kilometers high, reducing not just shores but inland cities to ruins. This would create new islands and inland seas with problems of their own.

Even if humans somehow survived massive tsunamis, supersonic winds and mass crustal fractures, we would have to look forward to life in bunkers, as these dangers would not die down until at least a few centuries.  

Scientists predict that this would also disrupt the coriolis effect, and cause the delicate ocean currents to be disrupted, which would end the life-giving flow of nutrients to the phytoplankton. 

The loss of tiny plankton may not seem like a big problem, but these tiny organisms deliver over half of the oxygen we breathe. 

Not all hope would be lost, as over many a million years, the moon would slowly pull the Earth back to rotation, due to an effect called Lunar Tidal Drag. 

It uses the same force that causes tides, to slow down the Earth’s rotation by an immeasurable amount per year. 

Together, Earth’s speed has decreased by about 0.34 KpH in hundreds of millions of years due to this, so scientists predict that  the moon would cause the Earth to respin – but in the opposite direction!

Tidal locking (Tidal locking happens when one side of a celestial body (like the Moon) always faces the object it orbits.) would result in both sides being uninhabitable due to extreme temperatures. Clearly, this isn’t an option to stay here, so humanity would have to migrate and colonise planets like Mars to be able to survive.  

For more information on how to do this, see my article ‘Tardigrades Antifreeze and MOXIE: Could Living Organisms Survive On Mars’

Hypothetically, the algae (and other living creatures) would also be in danger from extreme temperatures as one side of the Earth would face the sun and the other would be in eternal darkness, creating thermal inequalities that would only add to the ferocious winds and tornadoes created. 

This would also completely disrupt the ecosystem, destroying almost all flora and fauna, depriving us of any food. 

The sunny hemisphere of the Earth would practically be incinerated, evaporating all signs of water and adding to the greenhouse effect, and the dark side of the Earth would reach extreme negative temperatures. 

Which side of the Earth would you choose—the scorching day side, or the freezing night side—and why?

This scenario would be so catastrophic, that there would be practically nothing that we could do to accelerate it back. We could try massive solar powered ion thrusters, or other technology, but building this in the supersonic winds would be nothing short of impossible. 

If the winds receded, we could try to build a massive propulsion unit that could utilize fusion propulsion or even a solar sail made out of a metamaterial that would turn non reflective, when needed, as it would have to be pulsed in order to spin the Earth in the right direction. Even getting off the surface of the planet safely would be a challenge, as currently, most rockets can only fly in strict weather conditions, and definitely not supersonic winds.

Although the Earth will (probably) not stop spinning for quite a few billion years, thinking about this scenario can give various insights on how our planet works. Our current technology limits our survival and our imagination (and the laws of physics) limits our technology. 

In the end, if humanity ever faced this nightmare scenario, we would have to dream bigger than ever before just to survive. Earth’s silent spin may seem ordinary, but it secretly powers so many of the forces that make life possible.

So what about you? If the Earth suddenly stopped spinning, how would ‘you’ try to survive? Would you go underground, take to the stars, or come up with something completely different? Share your wildest survival ideas in the comments—I’d love to hear them!