Is the Earth Going to Just (Yikes!) STOP Some Day?

According to this article (and many others, I’m sure), the earth’s rotation is slowing down, bit by bit, each day. So tomorrow/today (June 30, 2015 [if you’re reading this in the future]), there will be a “leap second”.

But just one thing I have wondered since childhood: Is the earth going to just (yikes!) stop some day? Because as I learned in hs physics class, that would be very bad.

If we suddenly stopped some day, we would then crash into the Sun. Because moving is basically the only thing that keeps us from crashing into the Sun, to begin with.

Are my fears unjustified? Or am I on to something here?

Thank you in advance, to all who post (and all those who allay my fears too:)).

:):):slight_smile:

No, the Earth won’t just stop. Eventually it will slow down so that the Earth’s rotation matches the speed of the Moon’s orbit, and then they’ll be stable.

But long before that happens, our Sun will turn into a red giant and will swell up and consume all of the inner planets, the Earth included. So don’t worry about the Earth’s rotation stopping. Worry about the Earth being completely fried and ripped apart by the Sun instead. :slight_smile:

And by the way, it’s not the Earth’s rotation that stops it from falling into the Sun. The Earth is whizzing through space at a very high rate of speed, fast enough to keep it in orbit around the Sun. Slowing down our rotation doesn’t stop that.

The earth spinning on it’s axis (which is the slowing that causes leap seconds) has nothing to do with the Earth orbiting the Sun.

And, yes, the Earth will eventually be absorbed by the Sun. But, fortunately for you, it will become uninhabitable long before that happens - the Sun’s output is slowly increasing, and we’ll end up getting cooked billions of years before we stop spinning.

The earth’s spin (rotation on it’s own axis) is slowing down making the day a bit longer necessitating the addition of leap seconds occasionally. The Earth would fall into the sun only it it’s speed revolving around the sun went to zero.

Some day in the very distant future, the Earth will probably become tidally locked to teh Moon so they each face the other as the Moon now does the earth. However, they will both continue to rotate relative to the sun so that every part of the Earth will continue to get day and night (which will last longer).

The Earth could fall into the sun if perturbations from Jupiter, a passing star, etc. changed its orbit just in the right (or wrong I guess) way, but it’s much more likely to fall into the sun when in a couple of billion years, the sun becomes a red giant and expands so much it swallows up the earth. I doubt there will be any people left to see this. We’ll have died off or managed to move.

If the Sun could last forever, eventually the Earth would become tidally locked to the moon, and a day would last a month.

That won’t happen, the Earth will be destroyed before our rotation slows that much.

Yep, on a Tuesday: we don’t know which Tuesday, but we know it will happen on a Tuesday.

Okay, okay, now you’ve got me worried about that. Getting burned to death (or even not to death) is one of my big fears. I’ll bet there’s no Sunscreen SPF rating high enough to protect us from that!

How soon will this happen? Do I have time to get my will in order at my leisure, or is this something I better do, like, yesterday?

Not for billions of years…but it’s a good idea to start building the infrastructure for a Space Ark to get us out of here, and it’s never too soon to start thinking long-term. The best thing we can do is invest in education, to discover the technologies needed to get us off-planet.

But, you know people! We’ll wait till the last doggone minute, and then freak out. Then everyone will riot to get on the one escape rocket we’ve managed to fling together. (When Worlds Collide is a factual documentary, didn’t you know that?)

Heh.

Extermination in billions of years is extermination nonetheless.

Have we the technology yet to spot anything inhabitable in the Clouds of Magellan?

It should be in early Spring, first half of April …

Patience.
I’m signaling the Outsiders.

Since the Moon orbits at about 70,000 mph, that would be quite an increase in the rotation speed of the Earth. :eek:

I come up with 2,200 mph, but that has nothing to do with rotation … it will become one rotation per month thereabouts.

If we just start breeding for luck, everything will work out fine!

Yes, me stupid. I was thinking of the Earth, Moon speed of revolution around the sun. Of course engineer_comp_geek was referring to the speed of the Moon revolving arounf the Earth. :o

The day was once about five hours long and the moon at about 1/10 the distance it is now. It has taken 5 billion years for this to happen. Imagine the tides! Tidal force varies as the cube of the distance, so the force of the lunar tides would have been 1000 times as strong and twice in every five hours! (Some of the tidal forces come from the sun.)

In only a billion years, the increased solar radiation as the sun starts to exit the main sequence will render the earth unsuitable for human life, at least as we know it. So we better start terraforming Mars. Today! This will give us time to build a starship and escape old Sol.

Err - last time I looked, Mars was also orbiting Sol.

Right, he’s saying that it will buy time, not that it is the solution.

Stop in relation to what? It’s already stopped in relation to itself and the 7 billion people on it. It will never stop relative to the sun until the day the sun finally eats it. So we’re just talking about the moon. Yes, the moon slows down earth’s rotation and would, if the sun were immortal, eventually tidally lock the earth and moon together, like a barbell spinning in space, one side always facing the other, permanently. But long before that happens the sun will eat the earth. So, no worries. :slight_smile:

That answer will cost 1 billion stars. For 2 billion they’ll take us there. :smiley: