Resurfaced video reveals what would happen if the Earth stopped rotating for a second

A resurfaced clip revealed what exactly would happen if the Earth started rotating for a second.

In the video uploaded to TikTok by @incomelane, the late radio and television host Larry King asked astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson this very question.

"That would be disastrous - disastrous," deGrasse Tyson said.

"Because right now, here in New York, you can calculate at our latitude, we are all moving with the Earth at 800 miles an hour due east because Earth is rotating.

"If you stopped Earth and you weren't seat belt buckled to the Earth, you would fall over and roll 800 miles an hour due East."

He continued: "It would kill everyone on Earth. People would be flying out of windows, and that would just be a bad day on Earth."

Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

People took to the video's comment section to express their concerns, with one writing: "New fear unlocked."

"Time to go seatbelt shopping, I guess," another added.

A third jokingly wrote: "Elon musk will find a way to not make that happen."

Someone else who said people would be lucky to survive something like this added: "I'm pretty sure anyone would be lucky to survive. Because y'all realize 800 mph is faster than the speed of sound. Even airplanes would be ripped down."

According to a 2018 article from the Smithsonian Magazine, the Earth's rotational motion is fastest at the equator, around 1,000 miles an hour.

If that were to stop suddenly, the momentum would send things flying eastward.

When rocks and oceans move, it will provoke earthquakes and tsunamis. The still-moving atmosphere would also scour landscapes.

But fear not.

Jim Zimbelman, a geologist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum, said that for this to occur, the same amount of energy stored in the momentum of everything on the rotating planet would be needed, and no physical mechanism on the planet can supply that.

In other Earthly news, Alexander Abian, a mathematics professor at Iowa State University, had proposed that nukes blow up the Moon to improve the Earth's weather.

And most recently, Dr. Anders Sandberg from Oxford University said that an alien invasion of Earth could be enticed by revealing the planet's location.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.