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Author | Topic: Technical answers for Velikovsky fanstasy | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brian Member (Idle past 4960 days) Posts: 4659 From: Scotland Joined: |
Could any of the scientists here give us a brief outline of what would happen if:
1. The earth stopped rotating on its axis. 2. If the Earth was to stop and then start rotating on its axis again, but in the opposite direction. If any of the answers to the two questions are positive, is there any evidence that you know of to support this in the last 3500 years? I'd like a scientific viewpoint from the people familiar with science. Cheers. Brian.
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AdminJar Inactive Member |
I think this MIGHT, just might, make a worthwhile topic but I also see it getting pulled way OT and into Josh pretty quickly.
If I promote it to "Is it Science" can you try to keep it tightly limited to this one subject?
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Brian Member (Idle past 4960 days) Posts: 4659 From: Scotland Joined: |
I'll do my best.
I just want scientific information related to the two q's.I don't really expect the topic to last very long. Brian.
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AdminJar Inactive Member |
Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
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Phat Member Posts: 18262 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.1 |
Wow! I never had heard of this character Velikovsky. Surfing a bit, I noted that most of the books which supported his theories were being sold by one guy..
I am not a scientist, but I can see that this stuff sounds like something along the lines of what Ptolemy would have embraced! There is no way that a planet can naturally stop turning. If one believes that it happened supernaturally, that is well and good but is NOT SCIENCE!
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MangyTiger Member (Idle past 6354 days) Posts: 989 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
It doesn't exactly answer your question but this site discusses why the Earth can't stop and start rotating again (among other things).
Actually it does discuss the consequences of an impact large enough to stop the Earth happening :
Rotating objects have momentum, called angular momentum. For the Earth, that amounts to about 5.9 x 1033 kg-m2/sec. Now imagine an asteroid hitting the earth a grazing blow right on the equator. That would be the most effective way an asteroid could change the earth's rotation, either speeding it up or slowing it down. The asteroid has angular momentum relative to the center of the earth, equal to its mass times its velocity times the distance to the center of the earth. Typical impacts in the inner solar system involve velocities of about 30 kilometers per second, and for a grazing impact the distance from the center of the earth will be 6400 kilometers. In meters, those figures are 30,000 and 6,400,000, respectively. So to have angular momentum comparable to earth's we have mass x 30,000 x 6,400,000 = 5.9 x 1033, or mass = 3 x 1022 kilograms. Since the earth itself has a mass of 6 x 1024 kilograms, we're talking about something with 5 per cent of the mass of the earth, or about 4.5 times the mass of the moon. This is way bigger than any known asteroid. How would this affect the earth? The asteroid has kinetic energy = 1/2(mass)(velocity)2. = 1.3 x 1031 joules. Let's assume the asteroid stops the earth's rotation cold. That means that 2.1 x 1029 joules of its energy goes into stopping the earth's rotation, leaving about 98 per cent expressed in other forms, like heat. It takes 400,000 joules to melt a kilogram of rock, so there's enough energy left over to melt 3 x 1025 kilograms of rock. That's about five times the mass of the earth. Even allowing for a lot of energy radiating to space or being blasted off as ejecta, this puppy will melt most if not all of the earth. So don't sweat the long-term environmental effects. If the earth is ever hit hard enough to affect its rotation, nobody will be around to tell about it. On the other hand, an asteroid 10 kilometers in diameter, comparable to the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, would have a mass of 1.5 x 1015 kilograms. If it hit the earth a grazing blow on the equator, its angular momentum would be 1.5 x 1015 x 30,000 x 6,400,000 = 3 x 1026 kg-m2/sec. That's about 1/20,000,000 of the earth's angular momentum, meaning it could change the earth's rotation by about 1/20,000,000, or change the length of the day by about .004 seconds. This is pretty tiny, but still several thousand times the effect of the great 2004 Indonesian earthquake. Even an impact big enough to cause a global catastrophe would still have only a tiny effect on the earth's rotation. I haven't had a chance to check any of the figures (or even premises) yet as it's the Cup Final and Doctor Who this afternoon but I think they give a fair reflection of just how impossible this idea is. I also haven't checked if the author (Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin Green Bay) is in Project Steve... Oops! Wrong Planet
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5908 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Brian
1. The earth stopped rotating on its axis. 2. If the Earth was to stop and then start rotating on its axis again, but in the opposite direction. Just so we are clear here what time frame are we looking at?
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5908 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Damn! double post!
This message has been edited by sidelined, Sat, 2005-05-21 01:56 PM
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Limbo Inactive Member |
quote: Thats easy. Time would reverse. Superman proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt when he saved Lois Lane.
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Asgara Member (Idle past 2303 days) Posts: 1783 From: Wisconsin, USA Joined: |
Yes, Steve Dutch is part of Project Steve...he is on the Project Steve 440 t-shirt
Asgara "Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it" select * from USERS where CLUE > 0 http://asgarasworld.bravepages.comhttp://perditionsgate.bravepages.com
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1405 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
you haven't heard of velikovski and the near collision of earth with venus as an explanation for the flood?
and we even had ted holden here for a while see http://www.bearfabrique.org/http://www.varchive.org/ The simplest possible interpretation of what Hesiod, Plato, Ovid, and numerous others are claiming is that Jupiter and Saturn very recently comprised a small double star system, and that we were part of that system. The flood and the various cosmic disasters you read about in ancient literature amount to descriptions of the mayhem which ensued as that elder system was captured by our present sun and the component bodies began to orbit the sun separately. but even if that happened it wouldn't stop the earth from rotating (or to reverse it) the problem with this is that there is no "handle" by which to cause the spinning to stop, no force that can act without some physical interaction, such as collision with another planet ("When Worlds Collide" - an old (1933?) SF story?), and if this happens the rotation issue will be the least of anyones worries. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}
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lfen Member (Idle past 4678 days) Posts: 2189 From: Oregon Joined: |
Brian,
This is thigh slapping rolling on the floor kicking your heels in the air laughing till tears come wacky crackpottery. God love Velikovsky and all the other entertaining nuts and the kind folks who bring them to us here at EvC. This is not bad science, this is way out weirdo psuedo science of the first water! Enjoy! lfen
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JonF Member (Idle past 168 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
Velikovsky's books aren't online, but some of this smaller works are, at The Immanuel Velikovsky Archive. Once, in an online discusssion with a Velikovskian, he recommended COSMOS WITHOUT GRAVITATION as an example of the scientific rigor and vast knowledge that Velikovsky brought to the table. Read it for yourself ... it's a truly incredible document. And some people think that's scientific rigor and vast knowledge!
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MangyTiger Member (Idle past 6354 days) Posts: 989 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
If I'm reading his stuff correctly then by complete chance I can shed some light on the depth of research that went into at least one part of this.
From COSMOS WITHOUT GRAVITATION:
Way back in about 1978 I was part of a group of four students who had to produce a ten minute video presentation that explained what the direction of rotation was around a low pressure area in the Northern Hemisphere and why it was this way. We were all doing Electrical and Electronic Engineering degrees, so we didn't even know that there was a definite answer to this. We basically had to allocate the work out between us - one to actually do the presentation, one to do the cameras and lighting, one to operate the video recording and effects equipment and one to find out the answer and write the script. I was the one who had to find out the answer and write the script. Now remember I was starting from a knowledge base of literally zero in this area - and it was way before the World Wide Web . I took an educated guess that the best place to look for the answer and, more importantly, an explanation I could understand and graphics I could nick was the copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica in the University Library. Sure enough after less than an hour of searching I had found an entry that gave me the answer. I don't remember how long it took me to understand it enough to write a script for the presentation but we're talking no more than a few hours (writing the script took ages but that's because coming up with a good script is hard, even just to fill a ten minute slot). I won't bore you with an explanation but if you want to look it up the key word you need to know is Coriolis. USA Today has a simple explanation with some useful links. Now the point of this rambling recollection is that if you want to know why winds rotate the way they do you can go from knowing nothing to having a reasonable grasp of it in just a few hours armed with nothing more than access to the Encyclopedia Britannica. So you have to wonder about the scientific rigor and vast knowledge that concludes that "the rotation of cyclones is also unexplained". While reading COSMOS WITHOUT GRAVITATION I noticed it is very old (1946). Now I have to confess I didn't have a clue when this Coriolis did his work. The answer seems to be 1835, although he didn't apply his work to weather systems. This had to wait until 1856 - a mere 90 years before Velikovsky wrote his stuff. Oops! Wrong Planet
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Brian Member (Idle past 4960 days) Posts: 4659 From: Scotland Joined: |
Whether Velikovsky was a nutball or not is OT. While it is highly amusing to read about him, my question was about what would happen if any of the 2 scenarios were true.
Maybe we could have a new thread for Velikovsky? Brian.
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