Could the earth stop spinning one day??

The story goes that some scientists were doing orbital mechanics calculations to determine the positions of the planets in the future, for use in determining the trajectories of future satellite missions. They realized they were off by a day.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970325g.html
http://sunnyokanagan.com/joshua/index.html

 

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What's more impressive by far than any rediculous "missing day" myth is that second link of yours. Holy crap!

 

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Could the earth stop spinning one day??

Only if the laws of physics were to skip a day. Angular momentum is always conserved i.e. it wouldn't suddenly disappear into thin air for one day then come back.

 

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No problem if you happen to be god.

 

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My goldfish stopped the Earth spinning once. But I told him to fix it so that nobody would ever know. Oooh shit, I've let the secret out.
Just read that second link (well, skimmed it). Isn't it funny the effort idiots will go to, to prove something they want, but can't find the time to learn science?

 

Yes I can see how guys have much more intelligent conversations on science

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Yeah well. We all have our moments. Or months. Or years...

 

:m: Stay Cool supe

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Much stress.

 

Lets look at historical data for a minute,.

(1) Egypt. The Greek historian Herodotus recorded that when he visited Egypt, the priests there showed him an ancient manuscript that told the story of a day that lasted twice as long as a normal day. As they had accurate water clocks that could record time, they could easily record that a long day had taken place.

(2) Egypt. Fernand Crombette translated some Egyptian hieroglyphics that said - "The sun, thrown into confusion, had remained low on the horizon, and by not rising, had spread terror amongst the great doctors. Two days had been rolled into one.... They made the moon stop in a small angle at the edge of the horizon. In a small angle on the edge of the horizon, the sun itself, which had just risen at the spot where the moon was going, instead of crossing the sky, stayed where it was. Whilst the moon, following a narrow path, reduced its speed and climbed slowly, the sun stopped moving and its intensity of light was reduced to the brightness of daybreak." The rest of the account records a exceptionally high tide that washed boats into piles of wreckage, drowned fisherman, flooded much of the land, etc.

(3) China. Gill, writing in 1810, quoted from a manuscript that unfortunately appears to have been lost. This said that in the time of their seventh Emperor, "..the sun did not set for ten days... and though the time of the sun's standing still were enlarged beyond the bounds of truth, yet it seems to refer to this fact, and was manifestly about the same time; for this miracle was wrought in the year.

(4) North America. Several North American Indian tribes have accounts of long nights. The Ojibways, Wyandots and the Bungees tell of a long night. The Omahas tell of the sun being caught in a rabbit's trap and only released just before dawn. The Dogribs tell of the sun suddenly becoming dark at noon.

(5) Aztecs. They have a legend of the sun not appearing for a very long time, so a conclave of the gods was called and a sacrifice made.

(6) Quiche Mayans of Guatemala. " They did not sleep; They remained standing and great was the anxiety of their hearts and their stomachs for the coming of the dawn and the day.... 'Oh... if we only could see the rising of the sun.'"

There is always the possibility that stories of long nights and long days could have arisen over time in the folk stories of ancient tribes. Many have fantastic elements and such events as a very dark day could have been exaggerated to become an extension of the night, and this could give rise to the story of a very long night. It is a little more difficult to imagine how a similar story of a long day could have been prompted, but human imagination can do much on such lines.
Now if this were to be the case, then we would expect such stories to be randomly distributed around the earth. But this is not what we find when these records are examined relative to their position around the globe.
Gerardus Bouw printed out the curved shape of the night shadow that passes around the earth each day, as shown on the diagram. It can be seen that this can be moved to a position such that ALL the "long night" stories can be covered by the night shadow, and ALL the "long day" stories are in the daylight section. This proves that all these stories were correctly positioned according to the location of the nation relative to the day and night parts of the shadow. It could not be a coincidence.

What date did it occur?

The Chinese account that Gill quoted stated that it occurred "in the year of the world 2554." Bouw says this is the identical year - 1448 BC - in his chronology for the date of Joshua's Long Day in biblical records.
In addition, the Peruvian account of the story took place during the reign of a king who ruled about 1400 BC.
Regarding the day, the Israelites entered the Promised Land on the tenth day of the first month (Joshua 4:19) which would be March 29th in today's calendar. Making reasonable allowances for the recorded events, he estimates that it would be between - May 8th - 15th in 1448 BC starting at about 9 am

Egyptian hieroglyphs specifically mentions the fact that the moon "reduced its speed and climbed slowly."
This would be in precise accord with the moon still continuing its slow relative movement to the sun as it takes 29.4 days for one complete revolution of the moon around the earth; i.e. it moves about 12 degrees relative to the sun each day. It is this that gives us our phases of the moon and our changing tides. Again, in this small detail, there is further confirmation of this event.

According to my hypothesis It could only have been a rogue asteriod or planet large enough and in close orbital path to the earth enough to induce a gravitational force to affect the planet's rotation temporary.

This would also verify accounts of a bright star in the sky during 2BC the time of the biblical birth of christ as forseen by people in the middleeast. The planet or asteriod could have easily been mistaken for a star because of its brightness!, in fact the object of relevance was on its way out of the solar system at precisely that time.
Whatever this object was, it did orbit our sun!! possibly making a pass every 3000 years or so according to an ancient sumerian text found in the middle east.

I don't believe every little piece of literature dug up from the ground unless its been scientifically verified in historial documentation and witnessed by individuals in their respective locations at that time.
I think this topic seems to have some relevant data thats worth debating about....from a scientific point of view!!!

http://www.geocentricity.com/astronomy_of_bible/jld/index.html

 

I've never heard of anyone who was able to genuinely refute the observations that various people made that the heavens stood still. Simply calculating it out without using advanced modeling techniques isn't going to do it. Is the mantle fluid enough that the crust of the Earth can slip around on it without destroying itself? How badly would it be disturbed if the crust slipped? Is the Mohoviric discontinuity something that would allow the crust to smoothly uncouple from the mantle? Is there a boundary layer of gases like volcanic gases or is that even required?

Also, we still speak of the moon and the sun from a geocentric viewpoint. It is still common to say that the sun and moon rise and set. We know that this isn't scientifically accurate. For someone to say that a few thousand years ago does not mean that they subscribed to the geocentric view of the universe, and it doesn't mean that they didn't.

 

This hypothesis is physically impossible. There is no physical mechanism in orbital dynamics for rapidly( 1 day?) slowing the rotation of planet sized body and then speeding it up again. The only mechanism for slowing the rotation of a body is tidal drag. The same mechanism that is currently slowing the earths rotation and causing the moon to spiral farther away in its orbit. This is a tiny effect that happens over billions of years.

Close approaches of planet sized bodies would have other consequences though. Massive tides, earthquakes, and more importantly, a permanent alteration of the earth's orbit about the sun. Analysis of our orbit shows that it has been stable for billions of years.

 

Geophysicist J. Marvin Herndon argues that the core of the Earth is really a 5 mile (or 8 kilometer) uranium ball that operates as a natural nuclear reactor. He says some day the reactor will exhaust its supply of radioactive material and that when it does the Earth's magnetic field will collapse with disastrous consequences.

If true, could this affect the spin of the earth?

http://www.discover.com/en/issues/aug-02/cover/

 

Uh, "analysis" of our orbit means that we calculate where it was so many years ago using its present state. We do not have any other way of "knowing" where the Earth's orbit was before humans started taking accurate measurements of its position in relation to the sun and stars.

You can "show" anything by mathematics. That doesn't mean that it actually happens. The mathematics may not be a truly accurate model and even when accurate we don't know what might have changed between now and then. We also can't easily predict the interaction between the Earth's orbit and Jupiter without more advanced modelling techniques that include a hell of a lot more than the interaction between two hypothetical point sources of gravitation.

In other words, Superluminal, you don't know what you're talking about.

 

Uh, "analysis" of our orbit means a bit more than that my astrodynamically challenged friend. If one looks at the near circularity of our orbit, given the time scales involved for other influences to "circularize it" it has been nearly circular for billions of years. A close approach by a massive body would absolutely disturb that circularity and our distance from the sun. Significantly.

Actually, the orbital dynamics of the solar system are quite well known. There are clearly many subtle interactions that cannot be modelled as acurately as others, but for the situation as we see it now to be as it is, it implies a long term overall stability on the order of billions of years.

Really? And you do? Pray tell, what orbital dynamics would you propose to stop the earths rotation and then speed it up again without disturbing our nearly perfect circular orbit about the sun? Has to happen in one day. Then please detail the energy released by stopping or significantly changing the earths rotation over a period of 24hrs. Or 12 and the effects that might have on the planet?

Eagerly awaiting your analysis.

 

No. The earth will continue to spin at whatever rate it is at if that happens. The bad part is the loss of the magnetic field which protects us from large amounts of solar and cosmic charged particle radiation. It would be bad.

 

Samcdkey:

Herndon's suggestion is actually a take-off on one made by myself in 1996, that the inner 'rocky' planets formed much like Jupiter, etc. Essentially, a cloud of hot Hydrogen gas with a trace of other heavier isotopes (circa 0.1%) would gravitationally collapse into a spherical ball, with an angular momentum (inherent in the original cloud) that would cause it to spin.

As the cloud radiated away its energy as it gravitationally compressed, eventually the boiling point of elements and compounds would be reached, and they would rain out towards the interior of the Hydrogen cloud, forming a liquid ball of elements and compounds in its interior. That liquid ball would both gravitationally stratify, as well as stratify based upon the order of rain-out of the elements/compounds, forming mostly a molten iron-nickel inner core, and molten oxide mantle. The very densest of elements, such as Gold, Uranium, etc., would tend to collect in the very center.

I suggested that such a large body of Uranium in the interior of a planet might create a natural reactor, though it is currently unknown whether such would occur, or whether it would be a reactor or simply have normal radioactive decay. This was posted on a web-site at that time, and was up for several years. If you wish verification, let me know a direct email, and I'll email you the references.

Incidentally, the inner planets (and moons of the outer planets) would have subsequently lost their Hydrogen blankets due to nearby OB stars' high UV output early in the Earth's history, under this theory, leaving behind only some of the very much heavier gases (CO2 on Venus, CO2, H2O, NH3 on Earth), or almost no gases on the lightest (moon, Mercury, Mars), depending on the mass of the inner core material, and the distance from the Sun.

Even Jupiter lost about 2/3rds of its original Hydrogen blanket, under this theory, leaving it relatively enriched in Deuterium.

As for the angular momentum, it would take quite a huge counter-momentum to stop the Earth from spinning, and even an exterior blow (huge asteroid striking the Earth)would not stop the interior molten magma, etc. from its angular momentum, which would essentially shatter the earth with earthquakes, etc. No, physics does not allow for such, and the best way to interpret the 'historical story' data is to look for sociological explanations.

Such a planet-shattering event may actually have occured in the region of the asteroid belt, spewing out billions of large chunks of molten iron-nickel, and large chunks of mantle (oxide) material, in its wake. Those would have had wild orbits, with most of the fragments eventually ending up in the Sun, though quite a few striking Mercury, Venus, Earth, the moon, etc. in its early history, leaving lots of craters. The few remaining such fragments in such wild orbits still drop bits of iron-nickel, etc. on Earth in the form of meteorites. That small percentage of the original fragments which happened to remain in oribts close to the original orbit, and the few (four) moons that might have existed around that planet(s), would now be stretched out to form the present-day asteroid belt, under that theory.

Regards,



Walter

 

According to your theory their isn't any difference between the loss of H for objects that are far away or close by, Netune and Mercury are quit far apart and each should have about equal losses, and somehow the oort cloud that exist for 95 % out of ice and other frozen nitrogen would be completly unnafected because?


PS vega I believe I know that story abouth Herodotus, and I believe it was misinterperted, before the Greek (it was a older story) the hours were determent by the position of the sun therefore a summer day was much longer then a winter day, the egyptians overcame this by adding a other 12 hours for the night time to make the days stable and that's the origin of the 24 hour days.

The chinees one smells like a super nova

 

Orcot:

Yes, the inner planets would have been smaller overall than the outer planets, though still gasball giants. Hence, they would have lost Hydrogen over millions of years until it was completely evaporated, whereas the outer planets would have lost a goodly chunk of their Hydrogen, but not all, but their moons, being much smaller still, would have lost all of their Hydrogen (except that chemically bound to heavier atoms).

Also, the solar wind would have been far greater inwardly, though I'm uncertain as of yet as to how much effect that would have had on the evaporative loss rate.

As to the Oort cloud, etc., perhaps that is the 'residue' of the evaporative loss; and perhaps the solar wind is a necessary factor for loss of Hydrogen for intermediate sized gas-balls such as the inner planets. Such solar wind would not have been present to any appreciable degree in the Oort cloud.