sfripp writes:
It doesn't mention a deceleration time, but for the sake of reconciling a long day scientifically it seemed appropriate! I doubt that anything on the earth would notice a gradual deceleration from 1000km/h over the space of hour, certainly not over 2-3 hours!
Since this was a miracle, it would have had to include not having any devastating effects from the deceleration, nor from the subsequent acceleration when the earth resumed spinning.
Without a miracle, stopping the earth, whether suddenly or within a few hours, isn't possible without disasterous effects. The kinetic energy of the spinning earth is approximately 2.56x10
29 Joules (see
David, Author at TechBlitz). Something would have had to exert this much energy to stop the earth without somehow turning it into a huge scrambled egg.
To see the difficulty involved in stopping the earth without damaging it, imagine you're in orbit around the earth where there's no gravity, and that you have a slowly spinning delicate mudball a couple feet in diameter before you. Your job: stop the spin of the mudball without breaking it up into smaller pieces and without causing it major damage, gouges or distortions. It can't be done.
The same is true of the earth. Any exertion of forces large enough to bring the earth's spin to a halt in only a few hours would leave their effects everywhere.
--Percy
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