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What If the Earth Suddenly Turned Flat? |
In Planetary science Terra is also a name of the third
planet in the Solar System, which is usually referred to as "Earth"
instead. It was named after this goddess, in accordance with the general rule
of naming planetary objects and satellites to Roman gods and goddesses.
The Earth is a round orb, almost four thousand miles
in radius, orbiting a star alongside some other orbs of varying sizes. But some
folks don’t believe of that, and after a long search, many have come to the
conclusion that the Earth is actually flat.
What does flat mean? The models I’ve seen posit that
the Earth is a disk with the North Pole in the center, bounded by Antarctica at
the edges.
We wanted to know what would happen if the Earth
really did become flat. we asked weather and climate researchers,
seismologists, astronomers and physicists to consider our planet suddenly
turning to flat earth. The answer is, universally, certain death.
Jeff Masters
Director of Meteorology at Weather Underground
Let’s assume the Earth is flat like on the UN logo,
with all the continents surrounding the North Pole, bounded by oceans. To keep
the oceans contained, the edge of this flat Earth has a huge wall (with lots of
advertising billboards and a considerable area of solar panels.) We might as well
have the Sun orbit this flat Earth. The weather would be pretty boring (but
much safer!) on this flat Earth since there would be no seasons. Seasons come
about because of the tilt of the spherical Earth’s axis, and a flat Earth would
see no change in incoming sunlight at different times of the year. Furthermore, the
flat Earth would not have the North Pole and the South Pole with cold weather and an
equator with hot weather, since the sun would shine down with uniform intensity
over the entire flat Earth. Temperatures worldwide would be about the same,
though the land areas would be warmer during the day than oceans, and cooler at
night. There would be no snow except at high elevations in the mountains.
The only physical process to drive weather, then,
would be land breezes, sea breezes, and topographically-induced winds. With the
Earth no longer rotating, there would be no spinning motion to drive storm
systems, and thus no hurricanes or large rain-bearing low-pressure systems
would form. In order to get rain, one needs a mechanism to get air rising so
that the moisture in it cools and condenses. Thus, the only rain would occur in
the afternoon, when solar heating of land areas would create a sea breeze which
would move inland, forcing air to rise along the edge of the breeze, creating
gentle showers or the occasional mild thunderstorm. Heavier thunderstorms might
occur in mountains where the sea breeze hits some topography, forcing the air
to rise more violently upwards. Severe thunderstorms with hail or tornadoes would
be extremely rare. Since the sea breeze would likely only penetrate a few tens
of kilometers inland, due to the relatively low contrast in temperature between
the oceans and land areas, the interior regions of all the continents would be
vast deserts where rain never falls. It would never rain at night anywhere over
land, though some weak nighttime showers might develop over the ocean areas,
due to land breezes that would blow out over the ocean at night. The best
analog in today’s world to the weather of the flat Earth would be Saudi
Arabia’s weather. I predict employment of meteorologists would be very low.
Leila Ertolahti
An adjunct professor in geology at Fairleigh
Dickinson University
I’m guessing we’re just ignoring air/space travel, how
unusual it would be for our planet to be flat when all the other objects in the sky are round, and the fact that Earth would collapse back down immediately, if
we suddenly flattened it and the same laws of physics still apply...
Assuming it doesn’t collapse back down but stays
flat, we would additionally need to assume that the magnetic field magically is
maintained. The magnetic field is generated by something called the
dynamo—essentially the movement of molten metal in the outer core, around the inner
core of solid metal. Without the current structure of the Earth and this motion, the magnetic field would collapse, and we would end up much like Mars. The
solar wind would quickly strip us of most of our atmosphere and life (as we
know it) would perish.
If we somehow artificially managed to create an
atmosphere (one that also can protect us from UV radiation, in addition to
allowing us to breathe, or we’ll all get cancer), no magnetic field would still
wreak havoc in terms of navigation for both people and animals, we wouldn’t
have the northern or southern lights (auroras) anymore. The loss of the dynamo
means no plate tectonics—which means no more volcanoes, no more earthquakes, no
more plates moving around on the surface of the Earth.
And through what we have seen from the words of
scholars so if the earth were suddenly flattening, presumably all sorts of hell
would break loose. I guess it would depend on how flat is it If we’re talking
about flat earth, gravity would be an immediate problem: gravitational
attraction goes as G(m1*m2)/r^2, where G is the gravitational constant, m1
& m2 are two masses, and r is distance. A sphere is a 3D shape that
maximizes surface area relative to volume, which kind of gives gravity the
biggest bang for its buck. If you flatten the sphere, the far side gets closer
to the new center point, but the ends spread way out, so surface gravity goes
down at the center, and way down at the edges. Lose gravity and say bye to the atmosphere.
Without forgetting other first-order problems: heat,
radioactivity, etc. In our spherical earth, both of these are concentrated in
the core. If the earth were flattened, they would have to go
somewhere—presumably a lot closer to the surface.
In conclusion, the Earth is round because its own
gravity inevitably pulls it into a spherical shape. To somehow make it go flat
and stay flat, you’d first have to find a way to switch off the effects of
gravity. This would have the unfortunate side effect of allowing the Earth’s
atmosphere to float away into space, rapidly followed by anything else not
physically attached to the surface. So, unfortunately, there’d be no weather
and no life.
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