# How fast would a human travel if the Earth stopped rotating?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-fast-would-a-human-travel-if-the-earth-stopped-rotating/294544>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 14, 2005, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-fast-would-a-human-travel-if-the-earth-stopped-rotating/294544 "2005-03-14T23:39:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2005, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-fast-would-a-human-travel-if-the-earth-stopped-rotating/294544/21 "2005-03-16T04:20:11Z")

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> [@High Cheese](#):
>
> I’m a little perplexed by the use of the term “magical stop.” (used a few times). How is this magical? Nothing in science or physics is absolute…
> 
> In my estimation, all of the above elements of Earth would stop rotating simultaneously and the superficial elements (bodies of water, trees, houses, mountains, anything extending above the surface of the sphere) would gain kinetic energy relative to the Earth’s one-time rotational energy.

I was the one who used the term “magical” and I used it because the division line between what gets stopped and what is left to go flying around is an arbitrary line - you’re saying that the Earth’s crust would be stopped, but mountains wouldn’t? Mountains are part of the crust. The overall shape of the Earth is close to an ellipsoid, not a sphere. You’re saying that there is this imaginary boundary where everything below it gets stopped (but not the oceans I guess), and everything else is left alone. It’s like saying that everything whose name begins with the letters A through M gets stopped, and N through Z doesn’t. That’s why I called this stop “magical.” It doesn’t even make sense from a physics perspective.

> [@](#):
>
> Whatever provides impetus for Earth’s rotation (what? gravo-magnetic interactions with other celestial bodies?) could someday lose their influence and magnitude.

At one time, there was a cloud of atoms that started collapsing due to its own gravity. Just like water going down a bathtub drain, it started spinning as it got closer to the center. The rocky chunks that coalesced had this spin too, and the Earth, being one of those, is still spinning from that. It’s not that there’s anything keeping us spinning, it’s that there’s nothing that has stopped it. The Moon is slowing us down slightly.

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