Srikant V. Devan, age 7, of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, for his question:

What would happen if the earth stopped moving?

The spaceship earth is touring through the starry heavens, orbiting the sun and spinning around like a top. It started all this dizzy dancing billions of years ago. And nothing, absolutely nothing could make it stop. However, if we want a nightmare, we can pretend. If some impossible thing made the earth stop moving, all sorts of ghastly things would happen in a hurry.

Buildings would topple and the winds would misbehave. The seas would slop all over the place and our whole world would fall into the sun. We can imagine these things if we want to scare ourselves into a nightmare. But let's remember that a nightmare disappears when we wake up and come to our senses. It cannot really happen. Neither can the earth stop moving.