Earth goes Geosynchronous

[Zor]

Today, Steve the Drunken blue three headed Omnipotent chicken makes earth go under a terrifying transition as it's rotational speed slows considerably. Earth becomes Geosynchronous with the sun (meaning that the length of each year is equal to the length of each day), forming a night side between 120 degrees west and 60 degrees east incumpasing Africa, Europe, South America and Most of North America. The rest of the world remains in prepetual daylight.

What happens and can we get a map of the world 50 years latter and a timeline for this?

Zor

[Leej]

Animals go absolutely crazy in light side. Die in dark side after plants all wither away.
End of human civlization isn't that far off.

[Mike Stearns]

Animals go absolutely crazy in light side. Die in dark side after plants all wither away.
End of human civlization isn't that far off.

^What he said.

[Doctor What]

Throw in:

uneven heating of the planet's surface and atmosphere => awesome storms and insane weather conditions on a planetary scale.

[IronYuppie]

Throw in:

uneven heating of the planet's surface and atmosphere => awesome storms and insane weather conditions on a planetary scale.
WHO NEEDS IMAX!!

[Midgard]

Hmm... does it include some sort of potential protection against civilization-ending events, a-la "Jack of Shadows" by Roger Zelazny? The day side getting technology to keep it from overheating and being bombarded by radiation, whereas the night side keeping itself from freezing through magic... that would be, well, interesting in a freaky sort of way.

[Darkest]

Wait, if the Earth stopped rotating, it wouldn't have a dark-side and a light-side. The only thing that would change is that a day would be as long as a year. 6 months of sunlight, 6 months of darkness.

It wouldn't do that much damage, would it?

BTW, maybe make it a little less drastic. Each 'day' is 2 months, for example, 1 month of light, 1 month of night.

[Forum Lurker]

The postulate was that it'd be geosynchronous, not completely immobile. Still, even a 1 year=1 day alteration would kill everything except the extremophile bacteria. Temperatures would, as noted, start varying wildly, so that during the day you boiled, during the night you froze, and during the twilight you were wracked by the tremendous winds caused by superheated air rushing upwards on the dayside.

[Darkest]

Still, life might evolve to suit. In a couple million of years, maybe there will be animals that constantly migrate closer to the twilight and can withstand the winds and suck down either meltwater (from ice on the dark side) or cooling rains (from the water vapor on the hot side). Maybe plants evolve on the 'morning' or 'dusk' sides of the planet that quickly grow towards less-hot areas.

What do you think this climate will do on the geography. Superheating and then supercooling could cause things to crack.

[Zor]

Ghetto Edit-I screwed up. The term i should have used is Tidally Locked-Ghetto Edit

Zor

[Weapon M]

There was a book like this called "The Long Afternoon of Earth," by Brian Aldiss.

Google it, or read this review. (http://www.lostbooks.org/guestreviews/2002-06-27-3.html)