Name: What If Earth Started Spinning Twice as Fast Right Now?
Uploaded: 2018-10-28T06:45:14.000Z
Duration: 6 min 29 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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Adverbs of manner

Everybody watching this video lives on Earth, at least hopefully

Makes one complete rotation every 24 hours

The speed of this rotation is what defines a day

But what would be some consequences if this speed doubled to once every 12 hours

First it's important to understand that the Earth spins at different speeds

At the Equator, Earth spins at a speed of 1670 kilometers per hour

The farther away you get from the Equator, the slower the spin you experience

So the Poles are where Earth spins the slowest

If Earth immediatedly began spinning twice as fast

The first thing you might notice is a little bit of weight loss

Because the centripetal force of Earth's rotation is stronger at the Equator

Everything weighs slightly less here than at the Poles

Currently, if you weigh 45 kilograms at the North Pole

You would weigh 156 grams less at the Equator

A person that weighs 104 kilograms at the North Pole would weigh about half a kilogram less at the Equator

But a much more obvious effect would be the lenght of our days at 12 hours instead of 24

Days being half as long means that years will have twice as many days

So we would need to create a new calendar pretty quick

You'd have to adopt a new sleeping schedule in order to fit in your work and school during your daylight hours

So instead of getting 8 hours of sleep per night

Most people would probably be getting 4 hours of sleep

If you're like me and stay up all night, well, good luck

Animals across the globe would also struggle to adapt their instincts

Specially nocturnal animals that would have to hunt at night with half the time they are currently used to

Animals that couldn't adapt would likely go extinct

Also, hurricanes would be dramatically stronger

Winds at the Equator would be deflected further eastward

And it would spin up hurricanes to faster speeds whenever they form

But that's not even close to the worst thing that would happen to our planet

The worst part about an Earth that spins twice as fast

Would be the water in the oceans concentrating around the Equator

The higher centrifugal force would pull 100 meters or more

Almost all of Equador, Colombia, Venezuela, Brasil

Kenia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Northern Australia

would be totally underwater in this scenario

Forcing hundreds of millions of people to move either North or South

Only the highest peaks like the Andes in South America

Or mount Kilamanjaro in Africa would remain above the raising waves

Which would form new islands out of what used to be entire continents

Africa would probably be split into 2 different land masses

With a few islands scattered between them

While South America would just be greatly reduced in size

One final reason that it would suck to be in the Equator during this scenario

Is that the less weight experienced would cause the air to be very heavy with moisture

The whole region would be shrouded in a very dense fog

Combine this with a super powerful new hurricanes

And the Equator would be an extremely hazardous place

This means the Equator would be a significant geographical barrier

And what remains of the Southern hemisphere

One final consequence would be at least a momentary loss

Geostationary satelites orbit the Earth at a speed that matches the planet's rotation

So that it can stay in place over the same spot on Earth's surface

If Earth's rotation speeds up then the satelites won't be in the correct positions anymore

Which means everything from GPS, TV broadcasting

As well as military and intelligence communications could be disrupted

The speed of Earth in reality is constantly fluctuating

4.4 billion years ago, our planet spun at a rate of 4 hours per day

Earth's rotation is actually slowing down every few million years

Because of the gravitational Pole of our Moon

Earth's rotation probably won't be getting any faster in the future

Unless we get hit by something enormous that we don't see yet

But then at that point we'd have a bigger issue to worry about anyway

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