
What Would Happen If Earth Started to Spin Backwards
Our planet rotates around its axis from west to east at a speed of over a thousand miles per hour at the equator! And this pattern has lasted for billions of years since the Earth was formed. But “what if” one day, our planet suddenly started to rotate backward, from east to west? It would be one thing if the Earth's continents and oceans were situated symmetrically against the equator when the change of the direction happened. In this case, the only change people would notice would be the climate, which would turn into a mirror image of the current one. In other words, there’d be no dramatic changes. But since life on our planet is rarely about symmetry, the effects of the Earth rotating backward would be way more complicated.
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Show Notes
Our planet rotates around its axis from west to east at a speed of over a thousand miles per hour at the equator! And this pattern has lasted for billions of years since the Earth was formed. But “what if” one day, our planet suddenly started to rotate backward, from east to west? It would be one thing if the Earth's continents and oceans were situated symmetrically against the equator when the change of the direction happened. In this case, the only change people would notice would be the climate, which would turn into a mirror image of the current one. In other words, there’d be no dramatic changes. But since life on our planet is rarely about symmetry, the effects of the Earth rotating backward would be way more complicated.
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