What Would Happen if the Earth Turned Faster.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 28 August 1914, Page 8

What Would Happen if the Earth Turned Faster.

It has been calculated that if the earth were to rotate eighteen times as fast as it does now a man at the equator would weigh nothing and that if he jumped in the air he would remain there. The man weighing nothing at the equator would weigh 200 pounds at the poles, and varying weights between the poles and the equator. There are no planets that turn eighteen times as fast as the earth/ but there arc some where the force of gravity is entirely different to what it is here. On the moon the .average man would weigh no more than fifty pounds, it has been estimated, . and could jump as many feet —that is, fifty feet —without trouble. This, however, would happen on any part of the moon, not because of the centrifugal force, as would be the case if wte were spinning about eighteen times faster, but due to a lack of gravitative force on the moon.

Measuring labour from our present standards, a labourer would have to receive enormous prices at the poles and scarcely anything at the equator, for at the poles everything would be extremely heavy, while at the equator a man might pick up a small cottage if he could get a good grip on it, and carry it about. To go further south in the other hemisphere under such circumstances would mean more than it does now, for in th*e south a /nan would iVtrl light and springy. He could walk ;.ll day without tiring, and jump over almost any obstacle, like a tree or a house, landing lightly. Unless railroads ran east and west the problem would be difficult to solve, it seems, inasmuch as a locomotive could scarcely pull the train in the north, while in the .-.-.lUiu tiiey would have to run under L iie lightest of pressure or else, with full steam on and no gravity, the train would pass the equator at about the literal speed of lightning. All this is, of course, conjecture, but it is based on careful studies of centrifugal force and its action on gravity.