What Would Happen If the Earth Stood Still?

The following is not a futuristic scenario. It is not science fiction. It is a demonstration of the capabilities of GIS to model the results of an extremely unlikely, yet intellectually fascinating query: What would happen if the earth stopped spinning? ArcGIS was used to perform complex raster analysis and volumetric computations and generate maps that visualize these results.

via www.esri.com

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The pictures are nice, but can you explain what it means? Description?
— Gordon
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 stood still, the oceans would gradually migrate toward the poles and cause land in the equatorial region to emerge. This would eventually result in a huge equatorial megacontinent and two large polar oceans.

For more information please follow website link(http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0610/nospin.html) just above the picture gallery

— Jack Lucky
Don't forget that if the earth stopped ALL rotations around its axis that it would loose its magnet field from the core not rotating either. That would cause us to loose our magnetic field and much of the Earth's internal friction. Thus we would loose our aurora borealises, our atmosphere, and much of our temperature. The lower temperature would cause the Earth to shrink and the lack of atmosphere would leave us open to solar radiation.

So let's assume that the core rotates with the same angular momentum, then the difference in angular velocity of the core and the crust has changed (changing the internal friction). Also the loose of the apparent "centrifugal force" (an apparent force that seems like a force that is moving away from the center of motion, when in reality there is just the centripetal, center seeking, force) would mean a loose in angular momentum and gravity would pull Earth particles closer to the center instead of changing their direction (i.e. this would make Earth smaller). Also since the Earth loosed some of its angular momentum (let us assume it was not from people spinning in the direction of Earth's rotation, like in the XKCD comic), there must have been some torque applied to the Earth, probably from something outside Planet Earth as a mechanical system. One might wonder about the effects of the mechanism that created the torque and how larger the torque was applied (the more torque, the less time since the Earth is at a "stand still", well not really a stand still, and the larger the torque the more abrupt the stop).

Those are all things to think about too I suppose.

— Matt