Since its formation,
the Earth has been revolving
west to east on its axis.
If one day our planet started
rotating in the opposite direction,
it would no longer be the Earth as we know it.
This is WHAT IF,
and here's what would happen
if the Earth started spinning backwards.
You don't notice it,
but our planet spins pretty fast -
460 meters per second (1,509 feet per second)
as measured at the equator.
A sudden change of direction
would cause disastrous winds
and massive waves.
Together, these abnormal weather conditions
would wipe out nearly everything above the ground.
Let's just skip over this destroying transition.
Imagine our planet reversed its direction billions of years ago.
You'd see the Sun and the Moon rise in the west
and set in the east.
And you'd never believe that the Sahara could be a desert.
How different would our planet turn out to be?
Short answer - the reversed spin would make the Earth much greener.
Long answer -
this new rotation would change winds and ocean currents,
and that would shift the planet's climate entirely.
Oceans work as global climate control,
distributing the Sun's heat all over the Earth.
They divert moisture from the driest, hottest badlands
and carry rainfall to thorny jungles.
If the Earth reversed its rotation,
one very important climate-driving current
would disappear from the Atlantic Ocean.
Instead, a different current would surface in the Pacific
and become responsible for distributing heat around the globe.
This new current would make the deserts retreat from Africa and Eurasia.
You'd have to go to the other side of the planet
to do some quad biking on the golden landscape.
More specifically, to Brazil.
The U.S. would also get very arid in the south.
But none of the new barrens would be anywhere close
to how dry the Sahara desert is now.
There'd be much more vegetation covering the planet.
Hey, that's more oxygen for all of us.
But those living in Western Europe would be in for a shock.
The Pacific current would push a lot of cold water that way,
bringing freezing winters to the region.
Russia, on the other hand, would warm up
and take a break from being the coldest country on Earth.
Life on the reverse spinning Earth would be different, too.
In the oceans, cyanobacteria would dominate over other phytoplankton species.
Billions of years ago, the oxygen-pumping cyanobacteria
invented photosynthesis
and transformed our planet's atmosphere.
Maybe having so much more cyanobacteria on Earth
would alter the atmosphere even further,
filling it up with too much oxygen for us to even exist.
Let's just leave our planet to spin the way it does.
And what if it stops rotating altogether?
Well that's a story for another WHAT IF.