Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 1/27/2006

Question
No, I'm not one of those geocentric creationists. I am actually writing a book, and I was wondering, is there any validity to the idea of a non-rotating planet? I mean, is it scientifically possible?  

Answer
Heather!
If you are writing a book, you must LEARN to dissociate yourself from "preferred" frames of references.

This is as much true in literature as it is in science!
You will agree that truely stimulating literature is the one that is iconoclastic, one that shakes established patterns of thinking or worldviews.

That is what is "refreshing" about such literature, be it the doleful poesque stuff, or a "wuthering hieghts" or asimov's "I, Robot"!

Coming to your question, what prompted me to dole out the above few lines was the tendency towards "exclusiveness".

For anything in this chaotic and random universe to be "non-rotating" would border on the most "exclusive"!

Each and everything in this universe has two motions "with respect to something else somewhwere else"! These two motions are the linear motion (speed in a direction or velocity) and rotation.

There is NO PLACE in the cosmos that is free from these motions, unless one "exclusively" binds oneself to a system of two bodies "completely at rest" with respect to each other speedwise and rotationwise!

Since someone famously said (einstein?) that "nature abhors a vacuum" and also "god does not play dice", I am constrained to answer that in a nature suffused with randomness and "chaotic homogenity", (brownian motion at the micro level and the homogenity of the cosmic background radiation at the macro level), a non-rotating planet would be a contradiction, an impossibility.

Hope you accept this reality and go on to write a fine book about a planet that "did not rotate" as it was gravitationaly "phase locked with it's sun!

The moon (albeit a dead satellite world) is a case in point.
it "does not rotate with respect to the earth"!

[You see god may not play dice and may abhor vacuum, but he does always allow "sheltered heavens" in exclusive frames of references!]

Jayen