(Idea conceived in the year 2007; on my own)
Speed Up The Earth….and Keep The Moon !
As a student I came to learn that science is the systematized knowledge of the universe gained through human observations and experiences spanning a long period of time.
Now I draw your attention to the following:-
1. that the earth’s rotation about its axis is slowing down
2. that the moon is gradually slipping away from the earth.
Both the above phenomena are taking place very slowly, but I am making a connection between them.
We know what a catapult is. It has been used since ancient times to throw stones at trees to bring down the fruit, or to keep away the birds. It consists of an open pouch with strings attached to both its ends. The stone is placed in the pouch and then the ends of the string are held together in one hand. The pouch is then swung around, and one string is released causing the stone to go away by the centrifugal force.
It is to be remembered that if the speed of rotation goes down, we would lose control on the stone. Here my hypothesis is that there is some force, say gravity, serving as the string while the moon represents the stone. In a way, as the earth is rotating about itself, it is also swinging the moon around itself. As long as the earth maintains its own speed of rotation, the moon will stop going away from the earth. If the earth slows down, it would lose control over the moon. This is exactly what is happening.
How to stop the earth from slowing down ? Let us consider the following age old saying:-
To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Let us take the example of a rotating large sphere floating on the surface of water. It has already overcome its moment of inertia since it is rotating. If a person stands on top of it, facing opposite to its direction of rotation, and starts walking without getting off the sphere, will the speed of rotation of the sphere increase ? If yes, we have found the answer.
Let us imagine that when we are walking in a certain direction on the surface of the earth, we are pushing the earth in the opposite direction. Only that the force applied and its resultant reaction, both are insignificant.
Now, think of an aeroplane and the thrust involved in its taking off and landing on the ground. Suppose that all planes on the earth faced the direction opposite to that of the rotation of the earth ? Would they not be pushing the earth in the direction of its rotation while taking off ? Similarly, those landing if facing the direction in which the earth rotates, with their braking action (an action meant to hold back the plane), would they too not be pushing the earth in the direction of its rotation ? This is one of the ways to speed up the earth !
Imagine more than 70,000 planes landing or taking off everyday around the world ! Those in USA, Europe, Middle-East, Russia and its past allies, India, China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and others all put together ! Imagine bigger and bigger jumbos coming up every few years !
It will require an international consensus involving a great cost, but a greater result for mankind; re-alignment of the runways ! There is no other solution.
Similarly, each spacecraft that takes off uses a huge amount of thrust while it goes off vertically. Suppose, all the rockets were to take off inclined by 2 degrees, tilted in the direction opposite to the earth’s rotation, would they make a positive contribution ? The answer is yes !
Let us remember that the resources for speeding up the earth have to come from nowhere else, but from the earth itself. So, before we go on consuming these precious resources, with planes taking off or landing in a criss-cross fashion across the plane of earth's rotation, maybe sometimes only causing the earth’s rotation to retard, let us start thinking in this direction.
Otherwise, at some point of time, our future generations will only learn of the mythological existence of something called the moon in the heaven !!!
MINING
We dig into the earth and remove what is inside. It may be coal, copper, iron, or aluminium. That makes the earth hollow, and some weight is lost. In some places the used mines are filled-upwith water, but that cannot compensate for the weight lost; running into tons per day. If you drop any of the above minerals in water, you know that they would sink. The reason is that water is lighter than what has been dropped into it. This is continuously causing unbalance to the rotation of the earth.
Better than filling the mines with water would be to fill these with water plus used mining machinery! That would certainly add the weight of steel to the empty mine!
MINARETS AND SKYSCRAPERS
If you insert a pin into a ball, and then roll the ball,the ball would be caused to wobble. Even if rolling in the air, the ball would wobble due to the unbalance caused. Similarly, adding tons of steel and concrete vertically over a limited area on the earth, then the structure carrying hundreds of people each one weighing 60 Kgs. on an average, is like a pimple or a boil protruding on the body. The result of such structure, again, would be dynamic unbalance of the earth.
Speed Up The Earth….and Keep The Moon !
As a student I came to learn that science is the systematized knowledge of the universe gained through human observations and experiences spanning a long period of time.
Now I draw your attention to the following:-
1. that the earth’s rotation about its axis is slowing down
2. that the moon is gradually slipping away from the earth.
Both the above phenomena are taking place very slowly, but I am making a connection between them.
We know what a catapult is. It has been used since ancient times to throw stones at trees to bring down the fruit, or to keep away the birds. It consists of an open pouch with strings attached to both its ends. The stone is placed in the pouch and then the ends of the string are held together in one hand. The pouch is then swung around, and one string is released causing the stone to go away by the centrifugal force.
It is to be remembered that if the speed of rotation goes down, we would lose control on the stone. Here my hypothesis is that there is some force, say gravity, serving as the string while the moon represents the stone. In a way, as the earth is rotating about itself, it is also swinging the moon around itself. As long as the earth maintains its own speed of rotation, the moon will stop going away from the earth. If the earth slows down, it would lose control over the moon. This is exactly what is happening.
How to stop the earth from slowing down ? Let us consider the following age old saying:-
To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Let us take the example of a rotating large sphere floating on the surface of water. It has already overcome its moment of inertia since it is rotating. If a person stands on top of it, facing opposite to its direction of rotation, and starts walking without getting off the sphere, will the speed of rotation of the sphere increase ? If yes, we have found the answer.
Let us imagine that when we are walking in a certain direction on the surface of the earth, we are pushing the earth in the opposite direction. Only that the force applied and its resultant reaction, both are insignificant.
Now, think of an aeroplane and the thrust involved in its taking off and landing on the ground. Suppose that all planes on the earth faced the direction opposite to that of the rotation of the earth ? Would they not be pushing the earth in the direction of its rotation while taking off ? Similarly, those landing if facing the direction in which the earth rotates, with their braking action (an action meant to hold back the plane), would they too not be pushing the earth in the direction of its rotation ? This is one of the ways to speed up the earth !
Imagine more than 70,000 planes landing or taking off everyday around the world ! Those in USA, Europe, Middle-East, Russia and its past allies, India, China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and others all put together ! Imagine bigger and bigger jumbos coming up every few years !
It will require an international consensus involving a great cost, but a greater result for mankind; re-alignment of the runways ! There is no other solution.
Similarly, each spacecraft that takes off uses a huge amount of thrust while it goes off vertically. Suppose, all the rockets were to take off inclined by 2 degrees, tilted in the direction opposite to the earth’s rotation, would they make a positive contribution ? The answer is yes !
Let us remember that the resources for speeding up the earth have to come from nowhere else, but from the earth itself. So, before we go on consuming these precious resources, with planes taking off or landing in a criss-cross fashion across the plane of earth's rotation, maybe sometimes only causing the earth’s rotation to retard, let us start thinking in this direction.
Otherwise, at some point of time, our future generations will only learn of the mythological existence of something called the moon in the heaven !!!
MINING
We dig into the earth and remove what is inside. It may be coal, copper, iron, or aluminium. That makes the earth hollow, and some weight is lost. In some places the used mines are filled-upwith water, but that cannot compensate for the weight lost; running into tons per day. If you drop any of the above minerals in water, you know that they would sink. The reason is that water is lighter than what has been dropped into it. This is continuously causing unbalance to the rotation of the earth.
Better than filling the mines with water would be to fill these with water plus used mining machinery! That would certainly add the weight of steel to the empty mine!
MINARETS AND SKYSCRAPERS
If you insert a pin into a ball, and then roll the ball,the ball would be caused to wobble. Even if rolling in the air, the ball would wobble due to the unbalance caused. Similarly, adding tons of steel and concrete vertically over a limited area on the earth, then the structure carrying hundreds of people each one weighing 60 Kgs. on an average, is like a pimple or a boil protruding on the body. The result of such structure, again, would be dynamic unbalance of the earth.
As a matter of fact the Universe is expanding. As far as our solar system is concerned the the Sun is burning out millions of tonnes every day and as a direct result its gravitational pull on its planets i/c earth also reducing and in turn the Earth is also moving away from Sun. All this is however happening at a very slow rate and the Earth still have a life of several 100s of thousand years before it is rendered unsuitable for the present day life on it. Eventually of course the sun will turn into a red giant and engulf the planets one by one. every star and every solar system has a life although in terms of human life span it is too large.
ReplyDeleteComing to the specific point raised about the I am unable to understand readily a connect of the Earth's moon slowly drifting away with the slowing down of the Earth's rotation on its axis.
Got to go now. may be I will add something more later. Thanking you for these thought provoking blog. Kaushal Narayan. kn.agrawal@gmail.com
very interesting and thought provoking! Although you blog post made me ask myself to what extent the weather conditions, like the winds and storms, have an effect on the earth's speed of rotation.
ReplyDeleteOne tip I wanted to give, fron one blogger to another :-), whenever discussing about any 'facts' it is always good to either give links to a reliable website (very important; the web is full of bogus stuff) or just note down your source of information at the end of the blog. Format may be anything like the name of a newspaper article, page on newspaper and so on.
That's what makes Wikipedia so popular and comparitively(stress here!) reliable.
Looking forward to more such blog posts!