What will happen if the Earth spins faster and faster?

[Jet2]

I know it sounds nonsense, but just for wild thinking.

 

Say from tomorrow on, Earth spins double up the speed...

 

On the first day, we could see two Sun rises and two nights within 24 hours...

and then 4, 8, 16 and so on...

 

Shall we age slower?

Or would we be thrown away from the Earth within the first week?

 

Will Earth tilt less and spin like a ballet dancer and then end up spins away from the current track?

[Moontanman]

I know it sounds nonsense, but just for wild thinking.

 

Say from tomorrow on, Earth spins double up the speed...

 

On the first day, we could see two Sun rises and two nights within 24 hours...

and then 4, 8, 16 and so on...

 

Shall we age slower?

Or would we be thrown away from the Earth within the first week?

 

Will Earth tilt less and spin like a ballet dancer and then end up spins away from the current track?

 

Probably teh first bad thing you would notice would a drastic increase of Earth quakes as the Earth bulges out from the equator due to the increase in spin. No we wouldn't change our age rate and that wouldn't be fast enough to throw us off the Earth. I'm not sure abotu the tilt, My intuition tells me the spin would affect the tilt but I don't know for sure.

[Janus]

If the speed of rotation doubled every day, then by the 5th day everything between the latitudes of 58 degrees N and 58 degrees S would be moving at better than orbital speed, and everything between 41N and 41S would exceed escape velocity.

[freeztar]

If the speed of rotation doubled every day, then by the 5th day everything between the latitudes of 58 degrees N and 58 degrees S would be moving at better than orbital speed, and everything between 41N and 41S would exceed escape velocity.

 

Interesting Janus. Can you perhaps post the calculations for this for those of us with a mathematical curiousity?

 

Something that has not been mentioned yet is the change in weather patterns. I'm not sure exactly ho it would change, but I would imagine that there would be more storms and violent weather in general.

[Zythryn]

Any storms would be short lived as I would guess that the atmosphere's escape velocity would be reached sooner than my own;)

In the first few hours or day the surfing would definately become a sport of champions!

 

Cowabunga!!!

[Jet2]

Think about the air flight. Put the weather aside, may be we can reach our destination much faster in the first few days...

[Zythryn]

If you discount weather, air travel would be no faster than it is today.

When traveling by air now, do you add or subract the rotational speed of the earth?

However, when you include weather, holy cow, what a tail wind you could get:)

[Boerseun]

If it were possible to spin up the Earth at the rate proposed in the initial post, I reckon all the coasts to the West of continents would dry up as the water piles away towards the East coasts of the next continent to the West due to inertia. The water would keep on piling up and up until the entire continent is flooded, and the water will spill over into the evacuated seafloor to the West, upon which it will speed away towards the next continent to the West, and so on.

 

Complete and utter obliteration through seawater, even before we start reaching dangerous velocities.

[modest]

If the speed of rotation doubled every day, then by the 5th day everything between the latitudes of 58 degrees N and 58 degrees S would be moving at better than orbital speed, and everything between 41N and 41S would exceed escape velocity.

 

Interesting Janus. Can you perhaps post the calculations for this for those of us with a mathematical curiousity?

 

Assuming the earth is a perfect sphere then -

Circumference at earth’s equator:

[math]C_E = 40077 km[/math]

Circumference at latitude:

[math]C_L = C_E \times SIN(L)[/math]

where L is latitude in radians. To convert from regular latitude to radians multiply by pi and divide by 180.

Speed for any latitude where speed doubles every day is:

[math]Speed = C_L(km) \times 2^{(D-1)} / 24(hrs) / 60(min) / 60(sec)[/math]

in k/sec where D is the day

 

Everything can be combined into one equation such that:

[math]Speed(km/s) = \frac{40077 \times SIN(L) \times 2^{(D-1)}} {86400}[/math]

where D is the day (1 being today and 2 being tomorrow) and L is latitude in radians. Here is what you get (Escape velocity is 11.2 km/s):

   day1    day2    day4    day6    day8
Lat S(km/s) S(km/s) S(km/s) S(km/s) S(km/s)
90  0.46    0.93    3.71    14.84   59.37
80  0.46    0.91    3.65    14.62   58.47
70  0.44    0.87    3.49    13.95   55.79
60  0.40    0.80    3.21    12.85   51.42
50  0.36    0.71    2.84    11.37   45.48
40  0.30    0.60    2.39    9.54    38.16
30  0.23    0.46    1.86    7.42    29.69
20  0.16    0.32    1.27    5.08    20.31
10  0.08    0.16    0.64    2.58    10.31
00  0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00

So, the equator would reach escape velocity on day five and the other latitudes follow like so:

Lat. 80 day 5
Lat. 70 day 5
Lat. 60 day 5
Lat. 50 day 5
Lat. 40 day 6
Lat. 30 day 6
Lat. 20 day 7
Lat. 10 day 8

 

Which is in perfect agreement with Janus :)

 

-modest