Question

What will happen if the earth stops the rotation about its axis?

Answer 1

If the Earth stops rotating, the results would be catastrophic. Some of the things that might happen are:

1. If the Earth's rotation instantly stopped, everything not fixed to the Earth would continue to rotate around at the same velocity that they were before. To us, it would feel like a giant earthquake where the Earth would suddenly start "moving" in the opposite direction of the rotation. Buildings would collapse, the oceans would wash up onto land in large tidal waves, and there would be a large atmospheric wind shear at the surface. (The atmosphere is not attached to the planet either and would keep rotating too). Since we are traveling at about 460 m/s at the equator (about 1000 miles per hour) we would be tossed pretty far. (We wouldn't fly off the earth, though. Escape velocity is much higher.)

2. Seismic waves from the impact would travel through the earth causing massive earthquakes. Depending on the size and velocity of the impact, the earth might even break apart.

3. Much of the atmosphere would be boiled off. A fireball would expand outward destroying materials in its path and hence polluting the rest of the atmosphere.

These things would probably kill all life and level everything on the Earth's surface! It would be much worse than the extinction event that may have contributed to dinosaur extinction.