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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: Taro who wrote (247233)8/24/2005 6:28:27 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 1572166
 
Unstable changes in the movement of plates could have some surprising effects but I doubt that ice masses on the poles could be heavy enough to greatly effect this process, at least not without a full scale ice age, and its approaches impossible for such changes to happen in the course of a day and then return back to normal when the day is done.

Also the plates have a lot of momentum. They not only have momentum relative to each other, but also the larger amount of momentum around the earth. At the equator the crust is moving over 1000 miles per hour. Even if we didn't have to consider the momentum of the rest of the earth, and if there was no friction between the rest of the earth and the crust, reversing the earths crust in direction, or causing it to stop, or even greatly slow down in the course of a day just isn't going to happen. And then to have it start up again?? Even if some natural force was exerted to stop the crust that much energy would also heat the crust a great deal, and it would be unlikely to be entirely uniform so it would cause the crust to buckle, and result in earthquakes, new and moved volcanoes, and new mountain ranges.

Edit - The ice, and even weather can apparently have a greater effect than I thought. (see image.gsfc.nasa.gov but not on the time scale of a day, and most likely only enough to change the earths rotation period by micro-seconds.

You might also take a look at
image.gsfc.nasa.gov

Tim
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