If I Ran Planet Earth

For now, gravity is stronger and it keeps you grounded. Currently, if you weigh about pounds in the Arctic Circle, you might weigh pounds at the equator. Press fast-forward on that, and your weight would drop even further. Odenwald calculates that eventually, if the equator revved up to 17, mph, the centrifugal force would be great enough that you would be essentially weightless.

More on that later. The faster the Earth spins, the shorter our days would become.

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But if we were rotating mph faster than usual, a day would be about 22 hours long. For our bodies, that would be like Daylight Savings on crack. And the changing day length would probably mess up plants and animals too. But all this is only if Earth speeds up all of a sudden. However, extreme weather could become more destructive.

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The reason why goes back to that weird phenomenon we mentioned earlier: But because we are spinning, the pathway of the winds gets deflected eastward. We would be pulled apart. Equally, we might not even notice if a truly supermassive black hole swallowed us below its event horizon as everything would appear as it once was, at least for a small period of time. In this case, it could be some time before disaster struck.

Interestingly, black holes are not necessarily black. Quasars — objects at the hearts of distant galaxies powered by black holes — are supremely bright. They can readily outshine the rest of their host galaxy combined. Such radiation is generated when the black hole is feasting on new material. Below the event horizon is where nothing, not even light, can escape.

What if we ran out of helium?

As all the matter piles up from the feast, it will glow. It is this glow that is seen when observers look at quasars.

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But this is a problem for anything orbiting or near a black hole, as it is very hot indeed. Long before we would be spaghettified, the sheer power of this radiation would fry us. For life to thrive, there needs to be a source of energy or a temperature difference.

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And a black hole can be that source. The black hole needs to have stopped feasting on any material — or it will be emitting too much radiation to support life on any neighbouring worlds. What life would look like on such a world assuming its not too close to get spaghettified, of course is another matter. The amount of power received by the planet would probably be tiny compared to what Earth receives from the Sun. And the overall environment of such a planet could be equally bizzare. That's largely a result of U.

In , the feds established a national helium reserve in Amarillo, Texas. The idea was to stockpile helium for use in blimps as part of the war effort.

Seven decades later, the government decided to get out of the helium business. Then-President Bill Clinton signed a law requiring the government to sell off its helium supply by [sources: Boyle , Feinberg ]. The move was intended to allow the private market to sort out helium's value as well as when and where it should be used.

Instead, it led to a fire sale of sorts in which the gas remained incredibly cheap, given how rare it is.

A new law granting more time to get rid of the stuff was passed shortly before the deadline, but critics say Uncle Sam should sell off its entire cache and leave the helium business to the professionals [sources: In the meantime, it's believed that the planet's total helium supply is running dry. Or it could make all of those things much more expensive.

Although argon — another inert gas — can be substituted for helium for welding purposes, no other element can do what helium can do in supercold applications. That means we'd probably have to go looking for helium in the atmosphere.