Saturday 9 February 2013

Gonna Need A New Clock

Sometimes, in those boring moments when i am sat in traffic or in the adverts breaks of , I do wonder what would happen if for some inexplicable reason the Earth began to spin around the other way. Obviously in the bit where it slowed down and stopped before spinning again the other way we would all be flung off into space but what effect would it have on those of us who had held on to something during the transition.
Then, being a girly, i think of shopping and buying new shoes and the Earth spinning thought goes away but as i cannot think of anything that could happen to make the Earth change its spinning pattern, i don't worry about it but then along comes science and tells us that the earth spinning could be speeding up due to the warming seas. 
Felix Landerer of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany have said that as the temperature of the oceans rises, the resulting changes in density and circulation would cause a net transfer of mass to the higher latitudes closer to Earth's axis of rotation.
Nope, i didn't understand it either so he dumbed it down for us a tad, 'Think of an ice skater who is spinning. When you stretch your arms out you slow down, and when you bring your arms closer to your body you spin faster. Earth, it seems, will hug itself a little bit tighter because of global warming'.
So what will a more rapidly spinning Earth mean?
Shorter flights is my first thought, followed by that chic black dress i saw in Debenham's this morning (damn this female brain) and then how the clocks would need to change as the 24 hour day would be out the window, then how it would need to be a silver wall clock to go with the decor in the front room and they had some nice ones in Argos, then we would age quicker because shorter days would mean our birthdays would come around quicker unless we added some more days to the year which would mean new calendars.
We would probably weigh less but we would have to balance that with increased earthquake and volcanic activity due to internal heat generation but most importantly, the one crucial and critical thing that should not be overlooked is if i changed the curtains, i may be able to get one of those retro clocks with the wooden surrounds from Next.

2 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lucy said...

All those sun dials would have to be scrapped then.