Retrograde Earth lore building and discussion

[ForbiddenParadise64]

As shown here, I have started to create a story thread for my timeline where the Earth begins to spin the other way, exploring my existing lore of this world’s human and animal denizens that have changed over the years since my timeline’s point of divergence.

I wanted to create this thread to discuss the future of the project and ways in which the lore is established in a way that doesn’t interrupt the story, but provides context.

It also allows discussion with you guys who may be more knowledgeable about geography, biology or anthropology than myself as to the plausibility of the project or offering suggestions for feedback in the future.

As a couple of examples of worldbuilding, there are the respective ranges of the genus Macaca (aka macaque monkeys) and Nyctereutes (aka raccoon dogs) in this timeline, a result of the altered climates of Eurasia changing the places in which they can colonise.

Other geographical ranges I wanted to speculate on how they might be changed outside of humans were things like possums in North America, conventional elephants (ie Loxadonta and Elephas, as opposed to Palaeoloxodon, Mammut and Mammuthus who are adapted to more temperate conditions), monitor lizards, perhaps big cats in this world.

But what do you think? Are there any other aspects of this timeline you’d suggest or critique for improvement?

 

[ForbiddenParadise64]

These climate maps give an idea as to the conditions of this world, but it’s not always easy to speculate necessary conditions for things like certain animal clades.

Where do you think would be some of the best places for opossums for example, since the desertified southeast would be a major barrier to the east coast? My view is that a more humid western Mexico and California may be suitable for them instead, but I’d like to hear some alternative opinions.

 

[CupofJoe]

I had to look up what an Opossum was [not that many near me].
Are they integral to your story?

 

[ForbiddenParadise64]

I had to look up what an Opossum was [not that many near me].
Are they integral to your story?

No, I was just using them as an example of a non-megafauna creature to speculate the different biogeography of it, and see how far could they plausibly migrate into this alternate North America.

That being said I do plan on doing an update set in this world’s California and they may make the cut if climatic conditions here are suitable for them. My main topic does have some videos that show the climatic range of this timeline’s different parts of the world, and I also have gifs showing preindustrial prograde and retrograde climates (both temperature and precipitation) alongside one another.

 

[Finchbearer]

It’s crazy to think on just how much speculation you’d actually have to put into this. You wouldn’t just be dealing with individual animals and how they would cope in X environment, you’re dealing with an entire biome. I’d imagine you’d have to consider everything from the ground up before you get to animals, given that we are the last things to have evolved.

There are lots of animals that will adapt to a wide and varied range on environments, like rats. But you also have many species that would fail to thrive if taken out of their natural habitat, like sloths. There’s just too many variables to give rounded answers.

 

[pmmg]

While I can see you have a lot of passion for this, it is way more than I would do to write a story.

I am not sure what to do with this really.

It also allows discussion with you guys who may be more knowledgeable about geography, biology or anthropology than myself as to the plausibility of the project or offering suggestions for feedback in the future.

I would not call myself more knowledgeable on geography, biology or a lot of topics. I am pretty knowledgeable on story, and have my own processes for what seems likely, or true, or not. In undertaking a story, it is true that I have to create the whole universe with it, but there are wide areas for leaving things fuzzy and undefined. I would not want the task of adding this much depth into a planet I was creating. Even if I got some of it wrong, I am not sure a reader would know or care. It may be that possums could not survive if the world spun another way, but if I was to include possums in the story, who would know it was wrong?

Once you change one thing, and specially that far back in a time line, its just impossible to know what might have come of it. The species (plural) that came and went may be entirely different than those we can point to today. So....its really an area of psuedo-wild speculation. If the Earth spun differently, maybe that asteroid that hit us and wiped out the dinosaurs was never on a collision course.

I am going to say, this is very impressive, but what's the story?

But what do you think? Are there any other aspects of this timeline you’d suggest or critique for improvement?

I mean this is already way more than I would do. If you stopped right now, you have a more understood world the probably 99% of fantasy created worlds.




Edited to add:

Along the lines of wild speculation, if the world rotated the other way, wouldn't that mean that things like volcanic hot spots, continental drift, fault lines, ocean conveyor belt and all of that would be different? That rather than North America sinking under the pacific plate, it would instead be sinking under the European plate? That when Pangia split apart, it was not the western side breaking away, but instead the eastern side? and if true, like...all the land masses would be different. We would not recognize the Earth.

This would also likely affect the day/night cycle, and the moon would have to orbit the other way. Is the earth just spinning backwards or is it orbiting backwards as well?

I think so much would be different, that we are pretty much free to speculate whatever we want.

 

[Genly]

Sorry, just changing the direction of rotation would be very unlikely to change the orientation and direction of plate tectonic processes. There is simply not enough energy in the process of rotation to do that. The plates are not moving fast enough to be affected by the Coriolis force created by rotation.

Also, the background material for Reversia implies that the change in the direction of rotation took place only 1.5 million years ago. That is not enough time to affect the orbit of the Moon. Even if the reverse rotation had been taking place over hundreds of millions of years, this would still not imply that the Moon would orbit in the other direction. The effect on the Moon's orbit of reverse Earth rotation would be to slowly change its distance due to exchange of angular momentum between the Earth's rotation and the Moon's orbit. Again, this effect would not be large over only a million years or so.

The main effects would be the ones detailed in the background material: very big changes in regional climate and biomes. But I agree that at this stage there is more than enough background material on Reversia, and the main question now is what is the story.

 

[pmmg]

Actually, I think it would. But if the time frame is 1.5 million years... maybe not enough time.

I wonder if the moon would remain tidally locked in such a circumstance. I suspect it would not.

 

[Genly]

I guess my rather pedantic previous post on this topic ignored the main overarching implausibility of Reversia, namely that the Earth can't simply stop rotating and then start rotating in the opposite direction, without a VERY big physical cause e.g. giant impact. But this is a fantasy writing group, not a science fiction one, so I guess the reversal of Earth's rotation is OK as a starting point for a fantasy world building exercise.

Would the Moon stay tidally locked? I guess then the question becomes what mechanism would exist to unlock it. Once an object becomes tidally locked, it tends to stay there because to unlock it would required the addition of energy to the system. The Moon is tidally locked because of tidal pull by Earth's gravity and the resulting dissipation of heat inside the Moon, and as far as I am aware, Earth's rotation rate or direction of rotation does not enter into the relevant equations.

 

[pmmg]

So every time the moon goes around the earth, it pulls the oceans with it, and when it reaches the edge of the continents, it releases. This release is causing it to drift further way from us at every orbit. Since the Earth is rotating a certain direction, the Pacific and Atlantic are pulling on it for various rages of time. If the Earth rotated the other way, but the moon kept the current direction of its orbit, it would find the pull of the oceans did not maintain their current timing, and went by faster. They would also pull on the moon against the direction of its orbit. If that was to cause it something that had less stability, it might start its own rotation, maybe eventually tidally locking again in the future. It might also suffer moon quakes and its own kind of shifting. Its just speculation.

In dont know about the root cause. I was thinking it was meant to have always been spinning that way. A change 1.5 mil years ago would not likely have changed much the land shapes, but it might affect where the hot spots were. I do think, over time, the land would start to drift the other way. Just a little bit of friction can have big effects over time.


It seems like the OP'er is not wanting to offer what was the cause of this, saying that of the many plausible reasons it could occur, the explanation is not among them, but I think only a meteor hit could do it, and it would have to big and in the right spot. Whatever it is, I dont think we'd survive it.

Maybe if the Sun got stable and pulled on us magnetically it could shift our direction. but the sun is not going to get stable.

 

[Genly]

OK, I get what you are saying about the tides. The reverse rotation would change the oceanic tidal dissipation because of the reverse direction of the tides and the geographical asymmetry of the bathymetry and coastlines, and this effect would enter the equations for tidal locking through the tidal dissipation term. It is possible to calculate this effect using standard software (e.g. OTIS), although I don't know how accurate it is, nor how big the change in tidal dissipation would be between Earth and Reversia.

Regarding the changes that Reversia might cause in the Moon's orbit, you are correct (I think) that these would be different from those caused by Earth, but I wonder how big they might be. It might be that the effect that you describe of the reversed rotation pulling against the Moon's orbit would be similar to the case of an Earth that rotated slower than the Moon's orbital period, but with a bigger impact. If so, conservation of angular momentum would cause the Moon to drift gradually towards Reversia.

Now you are right that if these processes had been happening for four billion years or so instead of just 1.5 million years, the situation would be very different! Maybe the Moon would have collided with the Earth by then...

 

[ForbiddenParadise64]

I am going to say, this is very impressive, but what's the story?

It’s a worldbuilding speculative evolution and alternate history project rather than a narrative story per se, though who knows, maybe a story set in this world could be an option in the future.

It seems like the OP'er is not wanting to offer what was the cause of this, saying that of the many plausible reasons it could occur, the explanation is not among them, but I think only a meteor hit could do it, and it would have to big and in the right spot. Whatever it is, I dont think we'd survive it.

Maybe if the Sun got stable and pulled on us magnetically it could shift our direction. but the sun is not going to get stable.

Yes, I intentionally left it vague in order to focus on the consequences of the event rather than the specific causes which would likely be catastrophic.

I’ve already got a large portion of the project written and am porting it over onto this website bit by bit, I kind of wished for critique for edits or future updates and to see if some of my evolutionary knowledge (especially given the limited time frame for new evolution) is considered plausible, as biological factors can limit how much animals would redistribute in such a world.

For instance, I’ve already speculated that animals like great pandas or elephant birds go extinct due to the desertification of southern China and Madagascar respectively, and that the MENA area would see an influx of animal and plant immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, India and Europe (the latter due to the considerable cooling there, with even southern Europe being like our New England roughly) that would find it inhabitable here. I reckoned that Asian elephants for instance would thrive in this world’s Arabia and the south Iranian coastline due to hot but not excessive summers, mild to warm winters, and a monsoonal precipitation pattern, all of which are ideal for Elephas, but I’m having trouble working out where their northern limits would be, as they do struggle with both too cool winters and too hot summers, so based on my GIFs, most of Syria and northern Iraq and Iran would be too cold for them in winter, though the southern Levant would still be ok.