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Author Topic:   Technical answers for Velikovsky fanstasy
Brian
Member (Idle past 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 1 of 20 (210169)
05-21-2005 8:15 AM


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


Message 2 of 20 (210208)
05-21-2005 12:03 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Brian
05-21-2005 8:15 AM


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 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 3 of 20 (210213)
05-21-2005 12:16 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by AdminJar
05-21-2005 12:03 PM


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


Message 4 of 20 (210216)
05-21-2005 12:27 PM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 5 of 20 (210219)
05-21-2005 12:43 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Brian
05-21-2005 8:15 AM


Soo Soo Psuedio
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 6353 days)
Posts: 989
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 07-30-2004


Message 6 of 20 (210231)
05-21-2005 1:52 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Brian
05-21-2005 8:15 AM


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 5907 days)
Posts: 3435
From: Edmonton Alberta Canada
Joined: 08-30-2003


Message 7 of 20 (210255)
05-21-2005 3:54 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Brian
05-21-2005 8:15 AM


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 5907 days)
Posts: 3435
From: Edmonton Alberta Canada
Joined: 08-30-2003


Message 8 of 20 (210257)
05-21-2005 3:56 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Brian
05-21-2005 8:15 AM


Damn! double post!
This message has been edited by sidelined, Sat, 2005-05-21 01:56 PM

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Limbo
Inactive Member


Message 9 of 20 (210259)
05-21-2005 4:09 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Brian
05-21-2005 8:15 AM


quote:
2. If the Earth was to stop and then start rotating on its axis again, but in the opposite direction.
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 2302 days)
Posts: 1783
From: Wisconsin, USA
Joined: 05-10-2003


Message 10 of 20 (210271)
05-21-2005 4:40 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by MangyTiger
05-21-2005 1:52 PM


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.com
http://perditionsgate.bravepages.com

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 11 of 20 (210292)
05-21-2005 6:25 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Phat
05-21-2005 12:43 PM


Re: Soo Soo Psuedio
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 4677 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 12 of 20 (210302)
05-21-2005 7:16 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Brian
05-21-2005 8:15 AM


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 167 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 13 of 20 (210307)
05-21-2005 7:44 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by lfen
05-21-2005 7:16 PM


Read for yourself
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 6353 days)
Posts: 989
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 07-30-2004


Message 14 of 20 (210317)
05-21-2005 9:47 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by JonF
05-21-2005 7:44 PM


Re: Read for yourself
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:
  1. Cyclones, characterized by low pressure and by winds blowing toward their centers, move counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. This movement of air currents in cyclonic vortices is generally explained as the effect of the earth’s rotation.
    Anticyclones, characterized by high pressure and by winds blowing from their centers move clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. The movement of anticyclones has not been explained and is regarded as enigmatic.
    Cyclones and anticyclones are considered a problem of fluidal motion with highest or lowest pressure in the center. As the movement of anticyclones cannot be explained by the mechanistic principles of gravitation and rotation, it must be concluded that the rotation of cyclones is also unexplained.
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 4959 days)
Posts: 4659
From: Scotland
Joined: 10-22-2002


Message 15 of 20 (210359)
05-22-2005 8:38 AM


Off Topic posts
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.

Replies to this message:
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