In the early days of space missions it was observed that spinning objects flip over spontaneously. This got people freaked out that it could happen to the Earth as a whole. Any solid object spinning in three dimensions will do this, and the amount of time it spends between flips has nothing to do with how quickly the flips happen.
Since then you might assume that this possibility was debunked. That didn’t happen. People just kind of got over it. The model of the Earth as a single solid object is overly simplistic, with some kind of fluid flows going on below the surface. Unfortunately we have no idea what those flows are actually doing and how they might affect this process. It’s a great irony of our universe that we know more about distant galaxies than the core of our own planet.
Unfortunately the one bit of evidence we have about the long-term stability of the Earth’s axis might point towards such flips happening regularly. The Earth’s magnetic field is known to invert every once in a while. But it’s just as plausible that what’s going on is the gooey molten inner core of the Earth keeps pointing in the same direction that whole time while the crunchy outer crust flips over.
If a flip like this happens over the course of a day then the Sun would go amusingly skeewumpus for a day and then start rising in the west and setting in the east. Unlike what you see in ‘The 3 body problem’ apparent gravity on the surface of the planet would remain normal that whole time. (The author of that book supposedly has a physics background. I’m calling shenanigans.) But there might be tides going an order of magnitude or higher than they normally go, and planetary weather patterns would invert causing all kinds of chaos. That would include California getting massive hurricanes from over the Pacific while Florida would be much more chill.
A suddenly flip like that is very unlikely, but that might not be a good thing. If the flip takes years then midway through it the poles will be aligned through the Sun, so they’ll spend months on end in either baking Sun or pitch black, getting baked to a crisp or frozen solid, far beyond the most extreme weather we have under normal circumstances. The equatorial regions will be spared, being in constant twilight, with the passage of time mostly denoted by spectacular northern and southern lights which alternate every 12 hours. And there will probably be lots of tectonic activity, but not as bad as on Venus.
Hello Mr. Bram.
Seems like in this post You are talking about "Dzhanibekov Effect". It was discovered by USSR cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov in year 1985 on Saljut-7 rescue space mission.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REUg34jnOnQ&t=6s
And I have the strong believe, that its absolutely identical to the prehistorical 180 degree rotation of the axis of our planet Earth in the past. And reflecting the our (maybe nearest) future.
1) First of all Herodotus mentions that before the flood, the Sun came out from the West, and after the flood it came out from the East;
2) The Quran says that the "moment before the end of time, from which repentance will no longer be accepted, and those who believe will not be helped by their faith, will come when the sun comes out from the West" (I'm not the Muslim it's just quotation);
3) The ancient Egyptian annals mention the ancient times, when the Sun rose in the West and set in the East;
4) Frozen forests found under the ice of Antarctica;
5) Instant freezing of mammoths in Siberia, when they were frozen (in one very short moment of time) in a thickness of ice and their meat was not even spoiled, and there was fresh grass in their stomachs;
and many, many other real facts taking about of inversion of the axis of the Earth..
Best wishes from the Europe / Olegs
The topic is certainly interesting, but it is more relevant for planets other than Earth. Although mass redistribution does occur inside our planet, there are several other factors that prevent it from significantly changing its axial tilt (unlike, for example, Mars or Uranus).
The main one is the Moon. The Moon is a very massive satellite, and the tidal forces it creates stabilize our rotation. For example, Mars does not have such a massive satellite, which is why its axis of rotation changes more chaotically.
Therefore, in the absence of external factors (such as a collision with a large asteroid or gravitational perturbations from a passing star), our planet’s axis is unlikely to change significantly in the near future (on a planetary timescale).