What would happen if an impact caused Earth to stop rotating?
If the Earth was struck by an object which caused it to stop rotating or begin rotating in the opposite direction, what effect would that have on the Earth? If an object struck the Earth and was large enough to cause Earth to stop rotating or to reverse its rotation, it would be catastrophic for the Earth in almost every possible way! I think I’ll just list some of the things that might happen: 1. If the Earth’s rotation INSTANTLY stopped, everything not fixed to the Earth would continue to rotate around at the same velocity that they were before due to conservation of momentum. To us it would feel like a giant earthquake where the Earth would suddenly start “moving” in the opposite direction of the rotation. Buildings would collapse, the oceans would wash up onto land in large tidal waves, and there would be a large atmospheric wind shear at the surface. (The atmosphere is not attached to the planet either and would keep rotating too). Since we are traveling at about 460 m/s at the eq
