i heard somewhere that the great flood (noah’s flood to christians) tilted the world about 30 degrees on its axis from how it was originally. whether you believe this theory or not, what would the world be like if it was tilted 30 degrees in the other direction? i don’t know which one that would be, but figure it out yourself. i’m the one askig questions here. anyways, seomeone said that some scientists had figured out that there would be more oxygen and some other differences; so they simulated the way the encironment would be in some kind of greenhouse and grew huge plants (i.e. melon-sized tomatoes, if i remember right).
We talked about this, with cites, in this thread.
I didn’t scroll down far enough to see that you posted this question in that thread as well.
You didn’t bother to read the cites then, but the general answer is that tilting the planet would at most have some effect on the seasons. The planet is now tilted 23 degrees (did you know that?) and the tilt precesses so that over a period of time the tilt is in all directions. Increasing the tilt by seven more degrees would not have a major effect. It certainly would not grow huge plants. If you have a cite for that, please give it.
Gypsymoth3, you need to be more specific about what is tilted. The magnetic poles have shifted many times but that doesn’t cause the kind of effects you are talking about. Shifting the rotational axis relative to the ecliptic is another matter. You also need to specify which way it tilted. If you mean tilted 30º more than the current 23º tilt there would be much greater seasonal variation. Long summer days in the arctic result in jumbo size vegtables from the additional sunlight but that’s balanced out by an extremely cold and dark winter.
There doesn’t seem to be much of a basis for the kinds of differences you are talking about. In any event additional oxygen doesn’t help plants at all but extra CO2 is terrific for plant growth. Things like this were tested when I was working at Biospher 2 back when it was operating as a sealed environment.
I won’t debate the view of the antediluvian (“anti” means you’re against the great flood :D) world but ask you to think critically about what the effects would be of the differences claimed by your teachers.
my b. i think i spelled it wrong.
as for tilt of the earth having aboslutely no major effects, what about when people say that if the earth tilted a few degrees one way, there’d be no oxygen?
By what mechanism do these people claim that the oxygen would disappear? Simply tilting the earth a few more degrees would have no direct effect on oxygen at all.
Are these “people” your bible teacher again? You’ve already been told you’re getting bad science in class.
If this is coming from some other source, please give us a cite so that we have some idea of what you’re talking about.
i can’t remember who “those people” are, and don’t assume all christians are stupid… just the ones at my school.
If you tilted another 30 degrees, wouldnt that mean that a huge chunk of the world would experience season long days and nights? I imagine that would have a pretty big climate effect.
That’s right- the greater the tilt, the greater the annual range of temperatures, probably causing seasonal storms and hurricanes- too much tilt and the atmospheric cell rotation systems would break down every year, causing atmosphere to flow from the summer hemisphere to the winter hemisphere and so on-
Uranus has dramatic weather for this reason.
see
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/1999/11/video/b
Free oxygen wouldn’t dissapear unless combined with another element… carbon is usually the culprit, but much carbon is combined into the Earth’s crust so it would be difficult to eliminate all the free oxygen…
tilting the world more would disrupt the biosphere but wouldn’t get rid of the oxygen- although it might increase carbon dioxide production at the expense of photosynthesis due to the destruction of plant life.
The axial tilt of the Earth does vary due to precession and mass movements inside the planet,
but if it has deviated too far from 90 degrees in the past 500 million years, no doubt it would be associated with a mass extinction of some sort.
Sci-fi worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html