h a l f b a k e r y"My only concern is that it wouldn't work, which I see as a problem."
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Throw large projectiles from anywhere on equator, not up towards sky, but as parallel to ground as possible, in eastward direction, till earth sufficiently slows down, so that days get longer. It will be fun, especially, in these days of fast life when you feel that days are too short.
Ocean Tides and the Earth's Rotation
http://bowie.gsfc.n...fc/tides/intro.html
Introduction to the subject. [DrBob, Mar 22 2011]
[link]
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The earth is slowing down, due to the tidal effects of the sun and moon. |
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Just wait, and the days will be longer. |
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You'll have to fling them completely out of Earth's gravity, otherwise you won't achieve anything at all, due to conservation of momentum. |
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There is a lot of value in this idea. Longer days will
mean shorter lives. If current life expectancy is 80
and you can slow earth down by 10% then that would
reduce to 72 saving billions on pensions. Education
levels would also rise since 15 years of education as
at present would become, in effect, 16.5 years of
education. Road traffic accidents would reduce since
speeds would drop from 70mph to an effective
63mph. And for anybody who is always 5 minutes late
they would always now be on time. |
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That means slowing down the year, too - which can be done by firing all the projectiles at the right time of day, so they exit the Earth at a tangent to its orbit. |
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Why on earth would you want longer days? Longer days = shorter lifespan (in terms of years) of which a greater proportion will be spent having to work.
I would be in favour of exactly the opposite solution. Having discovered that earthquakes speed up the Earth's rotation, I thought it would be a good idea to have lots of them in some remote location.
Unfortunately "lots" means really an awful lot of them to achieve a useful increase in rotation so we would have to combine this scheme with another one to attach some large rocket motors to the Moon and fire it off into some other part of the galaxy. This would do away with a large part of the tidal drag and we could all enjoy a shorter working life and a longer retirement.
We could further reduce tidal drag by blowing up the sun but then our retirements would be a bit cold and dark. I suspect, therefore, that that is a step too far. |
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Longer days are nice unless the day's length determines working hours, as daylight savings time suggests it does. However, I guess this suggests the nights would be longer, so more sleep too. I say lets go for it, lets mess around with the Earth's rotation. |
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