Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff you should know from house stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chipper and
Speaker 1: Cheery Chuck. Chucker's Bryant right across from me. How are
Speaker 1: you doing? I'm good man. I'm about to go get
Speaker 1: that jar of moonshine for my cubicle. And we've never
Speaker 1: done a show where we just drank moonshine the whole time.
Speaker 1: I think we should. What better day? I don't think
Speaker 1: it's at my desk at home? Oh? Really, do you
Speaker 1: have beers still? Or there may be some other there?
Speaker 1: I don't know what about. Well, there's a case of
Speaker 1: beer that some other dude sent me, like not it
Speaker 1: wasn't show related, but it's been sitting there for like
Speaker 1: a year. What shiner back? Oh? I got some too,
Speaker 1: And then there's a couple of beers from like England,
Speaker 1: and then there may be some moonshine. So let's just
Speaker 1: get drunk. Okay, So you're feeling good, I'm just getting folks,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do that, is what you're saying. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: my intro is, uh, you've already pood pooed it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel kind of bad about that. Oh, I don't
Speaker 1: feel bad. It's pretty much part for the course, buddy,
Speaker 1: Are you ready, Chuck? Uh? Many many years ago, roughly
Speaker 1: around four eight billion years ago, um, the Earth really
Speaker 1: started to forming together from a bunch of dust and
Speaker 1: rocks and other dust, so says you, because right, because
Speaker 1: the universe was spinning, right, and all these particles were spinning,
Speaker 1: and as they came together, forming an accretion from an
Speaker 1: incretion disk, they formed the Earth and all other planets obviously, right,
Speaker 1: and all of that spin. Thanks to the laws of thermodynamics,
Speaker 1: one of them, uh, continued to spin and actually accumulated,
Speaker 1: and so the Earth just's spinning. That's why it's spinning,
Speaker 1: because it's always been spinning and all of its particles
Speaker 1: that make it up have been spinning. So it's spinning
Speaker 1: because of the conservation of angular momentum. Right. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: Newton's first law of motion, of course, that's what it was.
Speaker 1: Not thermodynamics. There is a law of motion, which is
Speaker 1: what if an object uh, an object in motion will
Speaker 1: remain in that state of motion unless basically someone comes
Speaker 1: along and puts the brakes on it. Right, unless something
Speaker 1: acts upon it, exactly, and in the vacuum of space,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to act upon it to slow the Earth down.
Speaker 1: So it's just gonna keep going. And actually the Earth
Speaker 1: has slowed in its older age. Four million years ago,
Speaker 1: a day uh lasted twenty two hours. Yeah, it's been
Speaker 1: slowing consistently over time, right, Yeah, but it's gonna take
Speaker 1: a while to stop. I think in four hundred million
Speaker 1: years in the future, they think that the day will
Speaker 1: be twenty six hours, so to two years. Slowing by
Speaker 1: two or two hours a day over four million years,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not quick. Well, in four million years,
Speaker 1: is there going to be any Earth? I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's such a good question. What will we look like.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's me It's four million years, that's
Speaker 1: my guess. Um. Okay, so the Earth is slowing. We
Speaker 1: understand why it's spinning. We understand that it is slowing down.
Speaker 1: But what happens if somebody just comes along just stops
Speaker 1: it automatically, like just stopped poop stopped. Well, and by
Speaker 1: the way, Jerry, that wasn't an edit. Yeah, that's our
Speaker 1: signal when we beep, that is a call out to Jerry.
Speaker 1: So we're moving very fast, like faster than the speed
Speaker 1: of sound, even though it didn't feel like it. Um
Speaker 1: So if someone stopped it, those same things that would
Speaker 1: happen if you just stopped your car all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: or a train stopped all of a sudden, would happen
Speaker 1: here on Earth, except it would be much more drastic
Speaker 1: because we're spinning much faster. We're spinning in an easterly
Speaker 1: direction at about a thousand miles an hour along the equator.
Speaker 1: So yeah, if all of a sudden you stop the Earth,
Speaker 1: everything that's unattached to the Earth would keep going eastward
Speaker 1: about a thousand miles an hour, mass, instantly dead, massive flooding,
Speaker 1: you name it, the wind, shock waves, buildings, everything just go.
Speaker 1: And you said something that I find kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: like when I when I when I started to research
Speaker 1: like the Earth's rotation, It's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I just assume I know what I'm talking about, and
Speaker 1: then the more I looked into I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of little stuff here, like questions like
Speaker 1: why don't we feel the fact that we're moving through
Speaker 1: space at about a thousand miles an hour and well,
Speaker 1: I found the answer because the Earth moves at a
Speaker 1: constant speed, the constant rate of rotation. There's no acceleration
Speaker 1: or deceleration, which we would feel if that happened. Right,
Speaker 1: Why don't we spin off the Earth? Do you know why?
Speaker 1: I do? Okay? Here? Because of gravity and the gravitational
Speaker 1: poll like, we we want to spin off the Earth.
Speaker 1: That's you know, that's in there. But the force of gravity,
Speaker 1: or the force that wants to spin us off the
Speaker 1: Earth is point three the force of gravity, right, centrifugal
Speaker 1: force weigh much more gravity going on than there is
Speaker 1: uh the other So and I found that if the
Speaker 1: Earth rotated at a rate of eighty minutes, right, it's
Speaker 1: spun around on its axis one full time, So one
Speaker 1: day was eighty minutes long. That would be fast enough
Speaker 1: to overcome the force of gravity, would be thrown off
Speaker 1: into space. But we're not going anywhere because that the
Speaker 1: Earth is never gonna start speeding up like that. That's
Speaker 1: just crazy talk. No, And it's not gonna stop spinning
Speaker 1: either anytime soon. But we can still have fun with
Speaker 1: this topic. So, say that we were existing right now
Speaker 1: as the Earth was really starting to slow down, was
Speaker 1: making its last turn. So it did it gradually like
Speaker 1: Superman style, right, and then, um, the ecosystems were intact.
Speaker 1: Everything was generally intact the moment the Earth stopped spinning
Speaker 1: the day the Earth stood still exactly. Yeah, there would
Speaker 1: be some really interesting things that happened, like a lot
Speaker 1: of are the geography of this planet. I took for
Speaker 1: granted until I read this article, which really opened my eyes.
Speaker 1: So what what what? What are some of the things
Speaker 1: that would happen if they're just stop spinning. Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: seismologists think that it would set off a massive chain
Speaker 1: of super earthquakes because they suspect that UM, the rotation
Speaker 1: the Earth, plays a big role in the movement of
Speaker 1: the tectonic plates. So they seismologists think that you know,
Speaker 1: we would all be dead because of massive, massive earthquakes. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'd probably be dead for a lot more reasons which
Speaker 1: we can explore, but yes, diverse. Yeah, because think about it,
Speaker 1: that that spinning Earth, the centrivigal force of the Earth
Speaker 1: um is so strong that um it it basically keeps
Speaker 1: the oceans in place. It creates a bulge around the equator,
Speaker 1: Like the Earth is not a perfect sphere. Um it's
Speaker 1: bulged at the middle, and it's that's because of its spin,
Speaker 1: and that bulge actually brings the world's oceans towards the equator.
Speaker 1: In the southern hemisphere they moved north. In the northern hemisphere,
Speaker 1: they moved south. But it's being pulled towards the middle
Speaker 1: of the Earth. There's spare tire. So if it stops
Speaker 1: spinning all of a sudden, the world's oceans would go
Speaker 1: towards the poles. Yeah, like quickly. It would be pretty
Speaker 1: cool to see, I guess not if you're at the poles.
Speaker 1: Did you see a map of what it would look like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like basically a supercontinent in the center on both sides
Speaker 1: of the equator. Yeah, like all the way around the globe,
Speaker 1: and two big oceans, one on top and one on
Speaker 1: the bottom. Yeah, and the one on the top of
Speaker 1: the Arctic would actually be about a thousand meters deeper,
Speaker 1: not because there'd be more water there, but because the
Speaker 1: Antarctic basin is bigger deeper. That makes sense, so the
Speaker 1: water would be shallower by comparison. But yeah, I was
Speaker 1: looking so like Chicago would be just under the north
Speaker 1: shore of the Northern Hemisphere's ocean. Um and from that
Speaker 1: point down the United States would be largely intact. All
Speaker 1: the way into the Caribbean South it would just be land.
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat, good looking map. I love freaky weird maps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the early maps. Those were a little weird. There's
Speaker 1: a blog called um unusual Maps, I think maps. I
Speaker 1: can't remember what's called, but it's just like this blog
Speaker 1: about strange maps. It's pretty neat. I used to collect maps,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I didn't have a ton.
Speaker 1: I had like fifteen or sixteen like cool map posters.
Speaker 1: Nice to still have a few of them, but I
Speaker 1: think they went the way of the Dodo in my
Speaker 1: house where they like scholastic foldouts. No, like you know,
Speaker 1: some were like you know, civil War map or the
Speaker 1: Earth at this point map, or you know, just very
Speaker 1: none of them. We're just straight up. I think I
Speaker 1: had one straight up map. Um, so what else would
Speaker 1: happen once that? What happened is the uh? And Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb wrote this, didn't he No, Jonathan at a berry?
Speaker 1: That's right, at a berry at a berry. Good job.
Speaker 1: He says that it will take a whole year to
Speaker 1: pull off what the Earth does in a day, so
Speaker 1: one part of the world would be a blazing, scorching desert,
Speaker 1: and then one part of the Earth would be a barren,
Speaker 1: frozen wasteland half a year, half half the year. And
Speaker 1: that's because the since the Earth rotates on its access
Speaker 1: in about twenty four hours a little under, I think, um,
Speaker 1: if it stopped doing that, it would still move around
Speaker 1: the Sun, it just wouldn't spin on its axis. So
Speaker 1: I figured this out. If you're having trouble visualizing it,
Speaker 1: like I did, put your thumb in front of your
Speaker 1: face out a little bit so that your thumbnail is
Speaker 1: facing you, and then pretend that the Sun is in
Speaker 1: between you and your thumb, and your thumb is the Earth,
Speaker 1: and you just rotated around so that your thumbnails facing
Speaker 1: you all the time. But it's going around the Sun,
Speaker 1: and you'll see that at any given point, right, it's
Speaker 1: the this part of the Earth is facing a different
Speaker 1: part of the sun the thumbnail. So there would be seasons,
Speaker 1: but there'd be four seasons, and they would be very different.
Speaker 1: The line demarcating them would be really different. And when
Speaker 1: you went from winter to summer, eventually you would have
Speaker 1: nothing but sunlight and then nothing but dark, depending on
Speaker 1: the temperature swing would be huge. So what that means is, um,
Speaker 1: we'd probably have a really difficult time propagating with with
Speaker 1: husbandry in general. And you don't mean sex, you're talking
Speaker 1: with plants and animals. I'm not sure what you mean.
Speaker 1: They're propagating with husbandry sounded like a euphemism. No, just
Speaker 1: farming and animals. All that would be more difficult, if
Speaker 1: not impossible, Um to grow crops, you know, for or
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you grow them during the sunny parts
Speaker 1: of the year. What you can grow and then store.
Speaker 1: But we'd be in bad shape. I think we've very
Speaker 1: bad as far as that goes. But botanically speaking, we
Speaker 1: are a pretty uh, pretty quick witted species, so we
Speaker 1: could possibly overcome it technologically maybe you know, I'll bet
Speaker 1: we'd have a really good sunglasses. Yeah, yeah, that's true
Speaker 1: and coats. Um what else would happen anything? Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: the magnetic field, well gravity, I got something on gravity here.
Speaker 1: Gravity would be changed, which is not in the article,
Speaker 1: but um, it would change significantly if it stopped spinning
Speaker 1: because uh, centrogal force of course, what you're talking about
Speaker 1: contributes to that gravitational field, and it wouldn't exist any longer,
Speaker 1: so the gravitational fiel would be strongest at the poles
Speaker 1: instead of at the equator, and who knows what that
Speaker 1: would do. You'd just be a lot heavier at the poles,
Speaker 1: right you think, maybe, Okay, we'd also lose a very
Speaker 1: interesting thing called the Coriolis effect. Yeah, my favorite, which
Speaker 1: you know, um, supposedly with the Coriolis effect, if you're
Speaker 1: in the Northern Hemisphere, if you flush the toilet, the
Speaker 1: water goes down the drain clockwise and in the Northern
Speaker 1: Hemisphere county clockwise. That it's not true. It's all plumbing,
Speaker 1: it's all the design of the drain, the Coriolis effected.
Speaker 1: There has nothing to do with what part of the
Speaker 1: Earth you're in. It's no, it has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with like the drain, the supposedly the Coreolis effect, the
Speaker 1: fact that the Earth is spinning faster at the equator
Speaker 1: than it is at the poles. Uh. It has long
Speaker 1: been tapped as a reason for whirlpooles. They're saying, No,
Speaker 1: that's probably if it's if you're talking about a drain,
Speaker 1: it's the angle of the drain, it's the design of
Speaker 1: the drain, it's the water rushing in when you flush
Speaker 1: the toilet has nothing. That's an old wives tale. But
Speaker 1: there's a coreal Coreoles effect. It's just not quite as interesting. Basically,
Speaker 1: it says that if you leave the north pole and
Speaker 1: fly toward the equator towards a certain market the equator,
Speaker 1: if you're going a straight line, you're gonna miss your
Speaker 1: mark because there are spinning and it's spinning faster at
Speaker 1: the equator than it is at the pole Coreoli. It's
Speaker 1: a curve like a Yeah, you have to basically correct longitudinally,
Speaker 1: okay um to hit your target. Like you just can't
Speaker 1: find a straight line from the north pole of the
Speaker 1: equator if you're trying to get to a certain spot.
Speaker 1: That's the Coriolis effect. Nice, I guess unless I'm missing something.
Speaker 1: It seems kind of basic. Uh yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: basic once you wrap your head around it. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are some things that are slowing the earth down. Like
Speaker 1: you said, the days are longer now than they used
Speaker 1: to be. Uh, yes, they used to be what twenty
Speaker 1: two hours you said fion years ago? Yeah, okay, um,
Speaker 1: so we are slowing down. There is uh tidal friction
Speaker 1: and the tide drags two point three milliseconds on each
Speaker 1: century every hundred years. So that's pretty slow, right, But
Speaker 1: it adds up over time, surely, of course it does.
Speaker 1: Um weather can affect it. Two wins can actually slow
Speaker 1: it down. Earthquakes can redistribute the mass and actually speed up.
Speaker 1: Didn't it speed up in the earthquake in Japan? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think by um one point eight microseconds that the
Speaker 1: Earth's day, it's solar day, was accelerated because that earthquake
Speaker 1: was so massive. Nothing we could notice. What about magnetic
Speaker 1: field though, That's okay, so what I don't fully get.
Speaker 1: So with the magnetic field there, we're not quite sure
Speaker 1: why Earth or how Earth has a magnetic field. But
Speaker 1: the prevailing theory is that because of this coreolis effect
Speaker 1: in the center of the earth, um whirlpools are created
Speaker 1: of molten iron, and as this molten iron kind of
Speaker 1: moves around informs these world pools that actually generates an
Speaker 1: electrical field, an electrical current, which in turn generates a
Speaker 1: magnetic field. So we have this magnetic field. We think
Speaker 1: that's how we have it. But we also have long
Speaker 1: suspected that the magnetic field protects the Earth from solar winds,
Speaker 1: which are positively charged ions from the Sun that travel
Speaker 1: about a million miles an hour off of the Sun
Speaker 1: toward us, and they're about a million degrees celsius. And
Speaker 1: we long thought that it protected our atmosphere from be
Speaker 1: stripped of the ions that we need. Then we started
Speaker 1: looking at other planets and um that don't have any
Speaker 1: magnetic field, because I think it's just the Earth and
Speaker 1: the Sun in our solar system are the only ones
Speaker 1: with magnetic fields. UM. And we found that they lose
Speaker 1: ions at about the same rate that our atmosphere loses ions.
Speaker 1: So we don't know what the magnetic field is doing.
Speaker 1: But I did come across this one interesting fact. We
Speaker 1: lose about a ton of atmosphere a day, really yep,
Speaker 1: and and mostly in the form of water vapor. So
Speaker 1: the Earth is drying out very slowly. Wow. Ye boys,
Speaker 1: So we're slowing down, We're drying out, and in four
Speaker 1: million years will all be toasted. Yeah. That's pretty much
Speaker 1: the long and short of this. And what what We
Speaker 1: did a podcast on what would the Earth look like
Speaker 1: in different inter roles in the future, and I think
Speaker 1: we eventually landed on ultimately destruction and if we're even
Speaker 1: here any longer. Yeah, exactly. We'll use the Earth up.
Speaker 1: It's probably where we landed. Yeah, I think you're right. Well,
Speaker 1: good going, Chuck. Let's hear for Chuck everybody. UM, do
Speaker 1: you have anything else? I do not, sir. If you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about the Earth standing still, go
Speaker 1: to how stuff works dot com and type in earth
Speaker 1: um and it will bring up some pretty cool articles
Speaker 1: and probably an entire channel. There's Earth science just fascinates me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too, I said, search bars somewhere in there, which
Speaker 1: means it's time for a listener mail. Uh. You know
Speaker 1: you called out for how we helped you in your
Speaker 1: life emails. We got one from Rachel in Portland, Portland. Um,
Speaker 1: you guys, Uh, you guys have helped me through some
Speaker 1: of the toughest times in my life. I've shortened the
Speaker 1: beginning and August I moved from a small town in
Speaker 1: Mississippi to attend the University of Portland in Oregon. The
Speaker 1: transition was rough, Needless to say, I did not handle
Speaker 1: it well. I started smoking again, I had trouble focusing
Speaker 1: on in attending classes, and I could tell that I
Speaker 1: wasn't settling well or making friends. On top of all that,
Speaker 1: my three year relationship with my high school sweetheart fell
Speaker 1: apart because at the distance and stress of us both
Speaker 1: beginning university. I began to relapse into depression, something I've
Speaker 1: struggled with off and on for five years. Found myself
Speaker 1: unable to listen to music, even because every song I
Speaker 1: heard made me so sad, A one of those heartbreak
Speaker 1: dates when you just sit around and like listen to
Speaker 1: the radio and cry. I downloaded your podcast to listen
Speaker 1: to as I walked to and front classes, and while
Speaker 1: I did homework. Didn't notice at first, but every time
Speaker 1: your podcast was on it made me laugh. I'd feel
Speaker 1: a little bit better. About halfway through the semester, I
Speaker 1: found the courage to seek help and visit the campus
Speaker 1: health center for therapy and antidepressants. I am now my
Speaker 1: second semester of college with a three point nine for
Speaker 1: g p A. I have a few great friends, and
Speaker 1: I'm even dating someone new. I love my school and
Speaker 1: I love the city of Portland. I feel as if
Speaker 1: your podcast servan integral part of helping me make the
Speaker 1: transition from home to here. I've learned and laugh with y'all,
Speaker 1: and now and then a southern draw will sneak into
Speaker 1: one of your voices and make me nostalgic with this out.
Speaker 1: It may sound silly, but I feel I'll come to
Speaker 1: know you guys. I really want to thank you for
Speaker 1: helping me through such a hard time. Rachel eighteen in Portland.
Speaker 1: Thanks Rachel, it's awesome. I'm glad to hear you're doing better. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had a rough first few weeks of college. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people do. And uh, I think
Speaker 1: my advice is to just stick it out and before
Speaker 1: you know it, you're gonna be loving it. I remember
Speaker 1: my parents telling me that when I went off the camp,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, even like camp. I did not like camp.
Speaker 1: Did you like going off the college? Yeah, that's fine,
Speaker 1: you're probably ready with that. Yeah, I was. I freaked
Speaker 1: out because I at the last minute, I tried to
Speaker 1: change to go to Georgia Tech because my brother was there,
Speaker 1: and I was basically scared. I was like, I just
Speaker 1: want to go to school with my brother, and uh
Speaker 1: it didn't Uh it was too late to get the
Speaker 1: application in and so I was like, all right, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm going to Georgia by myself. And uh it
Speaker 1: ended up being the greatest thing ever. But I'm glad
Speaker 1: stuck it out, you know the rest of the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is true. I mean, like, you know, just hanging
Speaker 1: in there and being brave, even when it feels like
Speaker 1: that's the worst thing to do. Often it's it's often
Speaker 1: the best thing to do. And six years later and
Speaker 1: I had a college diploma and a lot of friends
Speaker 1: for life. It's good, chuckers. Uh, let's see. If you
Speaker 1: have a great story about solar wind or how we've
Speaker 1: helped you or call ite or whatever we want to
Speaker 1: hear about it, you can find us on Twitter right
Speaker 1: s y SK podcast. I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: you aren't getting that s y SK podcast. It's a
Speaker 1: great Twitter feed. Yeah, Josh is the Twitter master. We
Speaker 1: have a great Facebook page that Chuck helms Facebook dot
Speaker 1: com slash stuff. You should know. People love that. You
Speaker 1: can send us an email, which is fine. Uh. That's
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com and everybody, seriously, stop
Speaker 1: what you're doing right now. Go to the home of
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck on the web. It's our very own website.
Speaker 1: It's fun. It's called stuff. You should oh dot com
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