A Proposal to Stand Still

At the latitude of London the earth’s surface is spinning at 656 miles per hour — every tree, every mountain, every cup of tea is slipping through the blackness of space at incredible speed.

If you travel north or south though, beyond the lights of civilisation, time begins to unravel. As you approach the poles a number of things begin to happen. The sun fails to rise or fall so that a single winter’s night lasts for three months and in summer the sun simply draws circles in the sky. Usually hidden behind thick cloud, the light of this sun reflects from every surface — bouncing from snow, to clouds and back so that all directions are lost in a perfect whiteout. In this whiteout all scale is dissolved and the only thing left is yourself drifting in constant whiteness. Most importantly though as you travel nearer the pole the surface of the earth is spinning slower and slower through space. The poles are the spindle on which the earth turns, the points around which everything else rotates ­ standing on this spot a person would simply turn in space every 24 hours.

To demonstrate a perfect stillness I propose to travel to the Arctic to run through the white empty space at the top of the world at precisely the same speed but in the opposite direction as the Earth is turning. At a distance of 30 miles from the pole, the Earth’s surface is spinning at 4mph*. At this exact latitude I propose to run in a westerly direction at 4mph. If seen from a passing asteroid I will be the only thing on the surface of the earth that appears to be standing still — driving the rotation of the Earth with my feet.

*If a man can run in snow at 4 mph then theoretically in 24 hours he would cover 96 miles. Using Pi, at a distance of 30.5 miles from the pole a complete circular journey around of the globe would be 96 miles long. At this distance from the pole, therefore, running at 4mph in a westerly direction would exactly equal the speed of the spinning globe.