smokerblog

In the interest of lessening humankind's impact on the globe, when we induce an artificial shift in the earth's rotation, should we correct it?

What I have in mind is an annual "rotation correction" day. The idea is that, depending on whether we are overrotating or underrotating, at 00:00:00UTC on rotation correction day, everyone in the world and their uncle leaps wildly eastward or westward (respectively). The fact that everyone in the world has the same uncle is a separate issue.

Of course, anyone with even a high school knowledge of physics (which I do not possess) would tell me that as soon as everyone lands back on the ground from their leap, the rotation correction would be undone.

So to make this work, I guess everyone would have to keep running. Ultimately, of course, we could build robots to do the running for us. Of course, we would have to weigh the environmental impact of creating billions of robots against the potential benefits of rotational correction. Frankly, it would be worth it just to sleep better at night, knowing that they were out there, running, for us.

Hi Ken :)

Plus, robots are just cool:
http://www.world.honda.com/HDTV/ASIMO/200412-run/index.html

But where would they run? And wouldn't they just keep bumping into people? And what happens when they reach the end of the continent, do they just fall into the ocean?

Maybe if we just put them near the North and South poles. they wouldn't be in anyone's way. But then, you'd have to take into account the added mass of robots that would be conentrated at the poles, which would alter the Earth's rotation all by itself.

Maybe the robots wouldn't have to run, the could just hang out at the poles. Yeah, that would work...

Hi Pietro! :)