Scientific Minds Want To Know

Scientific Minds Want To Know

What Would Happen if the Earth's Rotation Stopped?

Scientists used geographic modeling software to come up with a realistic answer to an unrealistic question: what would happen if the earth ceased its rotation?

If earth ceased rotating about its axis but continued revolving around the sun and its axis of rotation maintained the same inclination, the length of a year would remain the same, but a day would last as long as a year. In this fictitious scenario, the sequential disappearance of centrifugal force would cause a catastrophic change in climate and disastrous geologic adjustments (expressed as devastating earthquakes) to the transforming equipotential gravitational state.
The lack of the centrifugal effect would result in the gravity of the earth being the only significant force controlling the extent of the oceans. Prominent celestial bodies such as the moon and sun would also play a role, but because of their distance from the earth, their impact on the extent of global oceans would be negligible.
If the earth’s gravity alone was responsible for creating a new geography, the huge bulge of oceanic water—which is now about 8 km high at the equator—would migrate to where a stationary earth’s gravity would be the strongest. This bulge is attributed to the centrifugal effect of earth’s spinning with a linear speed of 1,667 km/hour at the equator. The existing equatorial water bulge also inflates the ellipsoidal shape of the globe itself.

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Dig unearths prehistoric sabre-toothed 'badger'

Palaeontologists think they have unearthed a rare fossil of a sabre-toothed carnivore which may have roamed Australia millions of years ago.

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Black hole blows huge gas bubble

A star-sized black hole is observed blowing a vast bubble of hot gas 1,000 light-years across.

New Deep-Sea Life Forms in the Atlantic Ocean

Purple-winged enteropneust. Photo: David Shale

Scientists first thought that the deep valley of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a massive undersea mountain in the Atlantic Ocean, was too harsh a climate for life. But when they explored the region down to the depths of 12,000 feet, they discovered a myriad of intriguing species, including this strange purple worm:

Blind, purple, and peculiar, this primitive, deep-sea life-form may be akin to the common ancestor of humans and all other backboned animals, according to scientists.
One of three new species of enteropneust acorn worm discovered during the mid-Atlantic survey, the creature has no eyes, no obvious sense organs, and no brain. "This is about as primitive as you can go," team member Monty Priede said.
But, he added, "they’ve got a head end and a tail end—the basic body plan of vertebrates." Such living fossils "represent the first mobile animals."

National Geographic has the gallery of new species: Full Story