Alex Foster on his new novel, which imagines what it would feel like to be on a planet spinning out of control

During the last month, the land experienced some of its shortest days ever recorded. The planet turned quickly enough to shave 1.4 milliseconds from its usual day 24 hours a day. These natural accelerations in the spin of the earth are, of course, difficult to notice. But if you are like me, the feeling that our world becomes uncontrollable – metaphorically, at least – may not be unknown.

In my first novel Circular movementI trace what would happen if the earth accelerated not only a millisecond, but one minute, or an hour, or 12 hours. What if the earth started to turn so quickly that we could feel it?

The simple effects of the help of the sun and bedtime are more often easy to imagine. How many of us already have the impression that there is not enough time during the day? In Circular movementThe characters are increasingly overloaded with work, find it difficult to follow the requirements of daily life while their days continue to shorten on them. Because their productivity is based on a high -speed global transport system which is in itself the cause of the acceleration of the planet in the book, their damage only aggravates the problem. (Vicious circles often appear in the novel.)

Once the planet accelerates enough, SNAFUS planning becomes the least of the characters’ concerns. The earth spin affects countless aspects of life. It organizes the flow of liquid metal inside the earth, for example, strengthening the magnetic field of the planet. A changing spin could therefore disrupt everything, from animal migration patterns to the appearance of the Northern Enlightenment. Inevitably, I had to choose the effects that I would represent in the book and that I would not know. I included effects only for pleasure (animals that run wild) and others for their literary meaning.

When I learned that cyclones increased, I saw an obvious resonance – both with the “circles” motif of my book and with the real climatic problems for which Circular movement is a partial allegory. Cyclones (and hurricanes and typhoons) rely on “the Coriolis effect”: the deviation of air and water because it derives from the equator with rapid rotation towards the slower posts. The phenomenon creates storms in the antihorarous sense in the northern hemisphere and storms in the hourly sense in the south. The faster the planet, the more ferocious storms.

But the effect that I was most obliged to represent – the one that felt me the most alive and the most dramatic in its representation of modern dizziness and disorientation – was the effect that the planet’s spinning would have on gravity.

While the earth turns, and we turn with it, a certain centripetal force must hold us on the ground. Otherwise, we would have thrown into space (although slowly), the way in which an athletics hammer flies when you release it, or the way your glasses can fly from your face if you turn fairly quickly. Obviously, my glasses are too loose, but fortunately, our place on the planet is not, and what keeps us in place here is gravity. However, the faster the earth turns faster, the more the gravity will be canceled (so to speak) and the more you feel light. I was excited, and a little frightened, to learn that even in real life, the rotation of the earth makes us feel about 1% lighter than we will be if the planet was always. It is if you stand at Ecuador – where you move around the earth’s axis the fastest, because the circle you do every 24 hours is the widest.

Far from the equator, the phenomenon is less pronounced but undoubtedly more bizarre: the direction of gravity (pulling you towards the central point of the earth) is not aligned on the circle that you make (which is around the axis of the earth). The net effect is that the rotation of the earth does not make gravity feel lower; It makes it feel tilted.

As a novelist, I devoted myself to imagining how it would feel at increasingly high speeds. I have calculated the strength and direction of what the characters in the book call “loss of gravity” in London, California and the Caribbean, spending days from 24 hours to 20, 10, to 2 years. And I wondered: what does a 70%drunk fight feel? Where does a ball stop if you roll it in a square inclined time? What is the horizon line of Beijing if it moves away from 7 degrees? If the whole landscape is standing, is it like looking down? (Not exactly!) Are 7 degrees a lot? (In a way!) As history advances, the world of Circular movement becomes more and more offbeat.

The most important question that the book poses, however, is how we find belonging to such a world. In Circular movementNo aspect of the life of the characters is based on the acceleration of the planet – not the relationships they pursue, not the careers they choose, not their sense of faith or self. The characters are looking for love and goal while feeling without land, out of Kilter and turning through modern life. Hey too.

Alex Foster Circular movement (Grove Press) East The latest choice for the New Scientist Book Club. Register and read with us here.