Saturday, July 31, 2010

What Would the Earth Look Like if it Stopped Spinning?



What would happen if the Earth stopped spinning? We don't have any reason to think it will in the next few million millennia, but Witold Fraczek, an employee of geographic imaging software company ESRI, was curious. He used ArcGIS, the company's flagship software, to build a virtual model of the planet in the absence of centrifugal force.


Currently, the spin of our planet (it goes 1,667 kilometers per hour at the equator) pulls the mass of water toward the equator, creating an unsightly ellipsoidal bulge, and the oceans we are familiar with.

Read the entire article and view the image below:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/what-would-earth-look-if-it-stopped-spinning


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