A few questions

[DTonesXD]

1. What would happen if the earth were to stop rotating?

2. What happens in a black hole? My theory is that nothing actually disappears but rather breaks up into millions of pieces and therefore seems like something has disappeared

3. Will it ever be possible to cut through the centre of the earth? E.g. from australia to japan

 

[Klaynos]

1. That depends on why and how quickly it stops and on what time scale you're concerned about?

 

2. At what point, outside, inside or at the event horizon, how close to the singularity?

 

3. Probably not, by the time our technology is good enough to stand the compression and heat we won't have any desire or requirement.

[Mordred]

this should be 3 posts, not one.

 

If the Earth were to stop rotating, would result in serious climate change, one side of the planet would get extremely hot, while the other side extremely cold. Life would either have to adapt or perish.

 

A black hole is called such as the gravity is so great that light cannot escape it google Schwartzchild metric. Infalling material becomes high energy particles (Radiation) and circle the event horizon, A % makes it beyond the event horizon, the rest eventually escapes via the accretion jets. However any in-falling material beyond the EH is essentially lost as we cannot determine what happens beyond the event horizon. Light cannot escape remember.

 

Now as for cutting through the Earth, the extreme heat alone makes this impractical. Its far safer to simply fly around the globe. So I wouldn't expect any serious research into this endeavor

Edited May 19, 2014 by Mordred

[pwagen]

I think we all know the first question assumes the Earth stopped spinning instantly, thus the answer everyone really wants is "we'd fly sideways at 1600 km/h". Just think of the Hollywood potential.

[Mordred]

that would be cool to watch in a movie lol

[Phi for All]

3. Will it ever be possible to cut through the centre of the earth? E.g. from australia to japan

 

That wouldn't be a straight line though. Brazil to Japan would be straighter. But as Klaynos observes, if we had the technology to do that, we wouldn't need to do that.

[DTonesXD]

Thanks for the answers!

[Acme]

1. What would happen if the earth were to stop rotating?

The question is nonsense as it will never happen.

Edited May 19, 2014 by Acme

[DTonesXD]

Acme, the question is hypothetical therefore I am only interested in what is the possibility if it did happen. Unlike in movies.

 

 

As for other members.. thanks for your answers

[imatfaal]

Acme, the question is hypothetical therefore I am only interested in what is the possibility if it did happen. Unlike in movies.

 

 

As for other members.. thanks for your answers

 

But even hypotheticals need to be grounded in a little fact; otherwise you are asking "If we ignore all the rules of physics what happens according to all the rules of physics when this event happens?"

 

The earth has significant angular momentum - to stop the earth you would need a vast external torque; frankly anything that could deliver this torque in a human time scale would also destroy the earth utterly.

[Klaynos]

Which is why I asked about timescale. From that you can get wm idea of the energies involved.

[Acme]

Acme, the question is hypothetical therefore I am only interested in what is the possibility if it did happen. Unlike in movies.

 

As for other members.. thanks for your answers

imatfaal pretty well covered your objection. I would only add that virtually all space bodies rotate/spin and while it is theoretically possible that they would briefly not spin, that would be a case of imatfaal's 'vast external torque' being applied to stop the spin and -should the body survive intact- that applied torque would set it spinning in a different direction.

 

Since applying the necessary torque to Earth to stop its spin would destroy humans and virtually every living thing, then no humans would be around to witness what happens when Earth stopped spinning and so the question is moot, or as I initially said non-sense.