Jump to save the world

[TheGreatBrain]

www.worldjumpday.org

Some are working on renewable energy, some on the AIDS vaccine, and some are working on, uh, making a bunch of people jump at the same time.

So sign up, everybody! This is your chance to make the world a better place, I guess.

(I don't know how old this is)

[Graeme]

Wee, signed up ^_^, though the link you provided is incorrect. It's a .org site, located here:
http://www.worldjumpday.org/

[DragonPaladin]

I'm in. >,<

[Dark_Soul74]

I'm going to laugh like hell if this has any actual effect.

[SpiderEternal]

For all we know, we'll do it a second too late, and kill the entire planet, yay!

[Protoss_Honor]

BULL! I very very very highly doubt that website. it is just another scam.

[Spartan-II]

Woah - A double spam attack.

/me alerts mods to the terrorist threat. *

I'm not joining, mainly because of the fact that jumping isn't gonna do anything.

[Sikawtic]

I joined ... cuz I want to.

[Modred]

So...what if they're a half day off and all of the jumpers on this side of the world (if you noticed, it only goes from Midway Island to the middle of Western Europe) actually drive us closer to the sun? I bet they didn't think of that. =D

[WeekendLazyness]

Simple physics states that nothing will happen. Even if everyone were to jump at the exact same moment, all they would do is push the Earth away from them an extremely small amount, changing the orbit of the planet for the time that everyone is in the air. Then the collective gravity would pull everyone (including the planet) back together, thereby returning the Earth to its original orbit.

Newton's second law + gravity = this will do nothing.

[Modred]

I wonder, did you mean Newton's Third Law? Anyway, they want 600 million humans to jump. That is 600 million forces in different directions. In addition, the mass of the objects jumping is insignifcant compared to the mass of the earth. Unless all of that force were exerted on one point, I argue that nothing will change in the earth's orbit at any time. At least not something that is remotely measurable in more than hundred billlionths of a nanometer.

[Sikawtic]

I hope the world explodes.

[GrassDragon]

I registered. It's a year away though, why plan so far in advance?

[Schwitzer]

Wasn't it postulated that if every person in China were to jump off a chair instantaneously, they would change the orbit of the Earth?

The forces we're talking about here, though... I doubt it's humanly possible to acheive the sort of precision required.

[DragonPaladin]

They plan to get 'more' people. I joined cause I like jumping.

[Markpyro]

The earth wouldnt be ready for that. if it gave us more daylight hours, it would ruin the ecosystem. The world has adapted for millions of years the orbit we have now. If suddenly it changed, though it might do a little good, would probobaly change a lot for the worse.

[ZeroCross]

Wow, these guys are either total idiots, or, uhm, they have nothing better to do with their free time.

Besides, since the earth is round, if everyone miraculously was coordinated to jump at the same time, then the world would just be pushed slightly whichever way was greater. Besides, if we go any further out, will the earth fall out of orbit and plummet away from the sun? Real good thinking. Throw the earth off it's incrdibly delicate balance that sustains life. :P

[TheBB]

Yeah, Newtonian mechanics dictates that this will have excactly zero effect on anything - so you're better off saving the world through other means. The only way we can change the orbit is to eject some mass towards the sun (say, split the planet in two, send one of the parts off towards the sun, and the other will jostle outwards), or get some outside impulse to do the job for us.

That said, if we could ensure that the people who jumped didn't LAND again afterwards, that would be a different story. Let's for a moment assume all of Chinas and Indias population went to some really small place (where they could still fit :P) and jumped simultaneously. If everyone weighs 75 kg, that's a total of like 150 billion kg. If we say a typical jump is 40 centimetres high, it requires a starting velocity of 0.29 meters per second. In total that's a momentum off 43.5 billion kg m / s. That same momentum is then applied to the earth in the opposite direction. The earth has a mass of 5.98 times 10 to the power of 24 kgs. The earth then experiences a velocity of 7.27 times 10 to the power of -15 meters per second. If we wanted to put the planets orbit 1% further away than it is now (that is, 1.5 billion meters), the said velocity from the jump would make that happen in... 6538 trillion years, which is at least 100 times the age of the known universe. And that is assuming the jumpers didn't land but somehow mysteriously vanished in thin air. So in conclusion, whoever thinks this works are smoking some serious shit.

[Rayne]

Wow, these guys are either total idiots, or, uhm, they have nothing better to do with their free time.

Exactly. Anyway, supposing everyone did jump at the exact same time, nothing would happen, the worlds gravitation pull not only acts on the things on the earth but on the earth itself. It would most probably pull itself back into orbit. But thats all hypothetical, because there is no chance that everyone jumps at the same time. On top of that the difference in time zones would ruin everything.

[dirty_raider]

Come enough with the physics, its a bit of a laugh nothing more.

I'm going to join in just because I think it would be hilarious if when walking down the street half the people suddenly jumped at the same, it would scare the shit out of the other half.

[WeekendLazyness]

Exactly. Anyway, supposing everyone did jump at the exact same time, nothing would happen, the worlds gravitation pull not only acts on the things on the earth but on the earth itself. It would most probably pull itself back into orbit.No, the people who were currently in the air would pull it back into the exact same orbit it was in. Please read the previous posts.

[RioMerc]

I didn't join because of the simple fact that even if every animal thing and plant would somehow jump at the same moment we won't have enough total weight to push ourselves away from the sun, considering everyone was in the excact same place and we jumped at the correct time we MIGHT move it, but like what, 100 trillian things is gonna get stacked that high without reaching space, and we don't jump at the wrong time of orbit (we'll push ourselves closer, maybe even close enough to the sun to be pulled closer cuz of it's graviational pull and the blahblahblah

[TheBB]

considering everyone was in the excact same place and we jumped at the correct time we MIGHT move it

No, it's impossible, no matter what you need to either let go of some mass or get some outside impulse.

Sigh... Damn you Aristotle. :(

[Night-Hawk]

Lol I joined for fun, if it really happends and we shift the earths orbit ummmm i'll ummmm..... nvm lol. ok but if we do get it and we all jump at the same time and we do move the earth WHAT IF WE MOVE IT TO MUCH then what armegendon ?