So I ask my wife an off the wall question...

Sometimes I ask my wife off the wall questions. So now I will ask you what I asked her. (Sometimes while driving she might ask "what are you thinking about?" and she will usually get an oddball answer like this one). This is what happened yesterday while driving back from church.

What if the Earth stopped rotating for 3 days? Oceans are controlled by the rotation and tides, but in this scenario they aren't. The only thing affected is night and day. Let's say our side of the Earth stays dark for 3 days, the opposite side light for 3 days. What would happen? Would the other side get so hot people would die? Would our side become so cold that people would freeze? 

Then my wife asked "why 3 days?". And I said "because it sounds survivable. 7 days would probably kill everyone either by heat or cold but I believe most people could survive 3 days on either side of the Earth. Finally, my daughter asked "What about Alaska that has darkness in the winter all the time?". I said that would play no factor, because they are on the edge of light and dark. They don't have complete darkness, only partial.

So now I ask YOU. What would happen to the Earth if the sun only faced one side for 3 days?

Well, I'd say that half the world would get more sleep than the other and there would be changes in temperature, but not to such extremes.  The heat build-up on the lighted side would dissipate somewhat into the dark side through air currents and the oceans.  And if I'm wrong, I've watched enough SyFy to know that should something like this ever happens, we can rest secure knowing that our fates are safe in the hands of the world's most brilliant minds:  Rachael Hunter, Stephen Baldwin, Dean Cain, and James Van Der Beek.  They might even get a hand from Shannon Doherty.

messiaen77 wrote:

Well, I'd say that half the world would get more sleep than the other and there would be changes in temperature, but not to such extremes.  The heat build-up on the lighted side would dissipate somewhat into the dark side through air currents and the oceans.  And if I'm wrong, I've watched enough SyFy to know that should something like this ever happens, we can rest secure knowing that our fates are safe in the hands of the world's most brilliant minds:  Rachael Hunter, Stephen Baldwin, Dean Cain, and James Van Der Beek.  They might even get a hand from Shannon Doherty.

Oh yeah, very interesting but you left out one, Tara Reid.

I thought of this based on the fact that where we live (Northwest Florida) it gets to be 88 or even 90 during the day this time of year but easily can drop down to 65 at night. That is a huge temperature change overnight. When I wake up in the morning I almost need a jacket but by midday I am sweating like crazy. So if the temp can drop over 20 degrees overnight I wonder how much it would drop over 3 days. 
And I am on board with getting more sleep!

According to NASA pretty much everything would be swept away into the atmosphere.

http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/q1168.html

According to NASA, climate change will kill us all tomorrow.....so I'm not sure how much trust I put in them these days.

Would it be a slow, gradual stop or a quick, sudden stop?

If it was "sudden" - it's guaranteed to wipe all life off earth immediately.

Or just shift everything about 3600 miles due East.

Remember, the premise is that the only thing affected would be that day/light thing.  So gravity would still be in place.  God's cool like that.

messiaen77 wrote:

Remember, the premise is that the only thing affected would be that day/light thing.  So gravity would still be in place.  God's cool like that.

If it was only for 3 days I think we would probably be alright.  People probably wouldn't get enough sleep, but I don't think it would be catastrophic.
If it lasted for a few months I think it would be horrible.  Even if one side of the planet didn't freeze while the other baked...people's sleep cycles would be so horrible it would cause a ton of social and psychological disorders (that would test the ability of society to stay cohesive).

And the number of selfies on Facebook would skyrocket!!!

Okay are we saying only the Earth itself would stop spinning? If it's a gradual stop, probably not much. But if it's a sudden stop, the atmosphere is still moving at the roughly 110 mph speed and the winds would be pretty destructive, I would imagine. Clouds would move quickly, storms would build up then dissipate.

Jeez, it does sound like a SyFy movie...

What would happen if the sun only faced one side of the planet for three days?  A lot of business owners selling time in tanning beds would go under!

alldatndensum wrote:

What would happen if the sun only faced one side of the planet for three days?  A lot of business owners selling time in tanning beds would go under!

But on the dark side of the Earth tanning time would be at a premium.

alldatndensum wrote:

What would happen if the sun only faced one side of the planet for three days?  A lot of business owners selling time in tanning beds would go under!

Yes but sales for the "black-out curtain" manufacturers would be booming!

Staybrite wrote:

alldatndensum wrote:

What would happen if the sun only faced one side of the planet for three days?  A lot of business owners selling time in tanning beds would go under!

Yes but sales for the "black-out curtain" manufacturers would be booming!

And then on the fourth day when the Earth starting rotating again, the customer service desks at WalMart, JCPenney, etc. would be crowded with people returning them.

Meet you on the dark side of the earth . . . yeah, doesn't quite have the same ring to it