La Jornada: “There is no force capable of stopping the rotation of the Earth”: Alcubierre Moya

Faced with the misinformation that went viral in recent days, on the eve of today’s solar eclipse, in the sense that the Earth would remain without gravity during this astronomical phenomenon for 12 seconds, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre Moya, professor at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, explained that “there is no force capable of stopping the rotation of the Earth”, a fact that would mean we would be left without gravity.

In interview with The Daythe researcher said that the inertia in the rotation of an object the size of our planet is gigantic, “stopping it is essentially impossible, it would require a collision with another object similar in size to the Earth, which is not going to happen.”

In fact, he continued, if the Earth stopped for any reason, “everything that was not fixed to the ground would be thrown at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per hour, or even more than a thousand (depending on the latitude at which they are located), towards the East.

“At the equator, the Earth rotates at 1,600 kilometers per hour, at the latitude of Madrid at 1,200 per hour. At that speed everything would fly to the East, causing earthquakes of levels never seen in history. All human infrastructure would be destroyed in seconds, practically nothing would survive a catastrophe of that type.”

Alcubierre Moya has made important contributions to general relativity, among them, he developed a mathematical model that would allow travel faster than light without violating general relativity, which maintains that nothing can exceed the speed of light.

The specialist added that gravity “is a force of attraction produced by large concentrations of mass. It cannot be to switch off in no way, it is something that is there simply because objects have mass.

“Eclipses have nothing to do with the force of gravity, they are simply the Moon passing in front of the Sun. It is as if we thought that by covering the Sun with our hand from an ant something catastrophic would happen to it.”

The eclipse that can be seen today especially in Spain, Iceland, Greenland and northern Russia is a fairly common astronomical event. There is nothing particularly dark or sinister about this phenomenon. “There are total solar eclipses two to five times a year, every year. But it is very rare that they can be seen from the same place because it varies when they occur. There are at least two every year that are seen from somewhere on the planet, but they are not particularly strange or uncommon,” the physicist concluded.

To enjoy observing the eclipse, yes, you must take the relevant safety measures to protect your eyes: use special dark glasses that comply with the international standard ISO-12312-2, to guarantee that the filter blocks 99.99 percent of intense sunlight, as well as all ultraviolet and infrared radiation, by allowing the passage of a maximum of 0.0032 percent of visible light and not seeing the Sun for more than 10 seconds in a row.