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  • Everybody watching this video lives on Earth, at least hopefully

  • Which means that you know the Earth

  • 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

  • How would this affect our daily lives?

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

  • Depending on where you are standing

  • 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

  • With Earth spinning twice as fast

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

  • Which is slightly more noticeable

  • 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

  • 730 days to be exact

  • 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

  • But sleep twice as often

  • 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

  • And receding from the Poles

  • The higher centrifugal force would pull 100 meters or more

  • Of ocean water from the Poles here

  • And this would be wildly catastrophic

  • 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

  • And would be subject to constant rain

  • 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

  • Between the Northern hemisphere

  • And what remains of the Southern hemisphere

  • One final consequence would be at least a momentary loss

  • Of satelite-based technology like GPS

  • 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

  • And during the time of the Dinosaurs

  • It spun at 22 hours per day

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

  • Because of the gravitational Pole of our Moon

  • And that slowing trend will continue on

  • For billions of years to come

  • 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

  • If you have an issue that you want to learn how to fix

  • Like learning how to animate your own videos for YouTube

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  • Almost 2 years ago I created this channel

  • And I literally had no idea what I was doing with animations

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