Ah, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to open up a can of good ol’ debunkin’. So it’s a good thing that World Jump Day is in a couple of days.
Maybe you’ve heard about this: the claim is that if 600 million people all jump at the same time, then the Earth will move from its orbit, and this will cure global warming.
Um. Yeah. Sure.
This won’t work, for lots of reasons. I really really doubt the folks behind this are serious, but sometimes people take bad ideas seriously (oh, don’t get me started!) and of course I am a nerd of almost godlike proportions. So I had to take this on.
The basic problems? People don’t weigh enough to do anything, even if they did the Earth can’t be moved around this way, and even if it could, it would have to move million of kilometers away from the Sun to make a difference. But golly, other than that…
Anyway, the debunking page goes into more detail, with math and physics and everything! But don’t let that scare you. It was fun to think about, and I hope it’ll fun for you to read too. So hop on over and give it a shot.
HAHAHAHAHAhahahaha. I slay me.
July 17th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Hmm…nice page but you really like the italics! (Hint: I think you forgot to close a tag properly).
As for average temperature, I’m reminded of:
“A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine.”
July 17th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
This sounds suspiciously like an episode of Futurama, where all the robots in the world are on an island to be destroyed because they were the cause of globalwarming, so they all “Farted” exhaust in the same direction and moved the eart a few inches further from the sun and cured global warming.
July 17th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
D’oh! I fixed the italic thing. Firefox displayed it with the correct tags! Grrr.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
One thing that’s a little unclear. On your page, you seem to be suggesting that the WJDers are saying that when people jump up the earth will shift (and then they fall back), whereas on their website it’s when people come back down, that landing force will make the earth move…
July 17th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
AH! This link explains a greate deal:
http://tinyurl.com/qawlc
“Jump Day” is something akin to “performance art”.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
Oh, very good Mark Martin! I searched around to see if I could find anything, but didn’t. I’m glad you found that. I’ll update that page.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
you forgot the orbital mechanics, too. BA
from an impluse delta-V, it would raise the orbit on the point opposite the change in velocity. i.e., when it came back around to that point it it’s orbit, it would intersect the same place.
so, if they’re jumping in june, they would most affect the temperature in what is winter for the northen hemisphere, and very little during summer.
hmm…
i agree it’s a joke, btw, i was just surprised you left something out.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
“so, if they’re jumping in june”
d’oh!
july
July 17th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
You have to admit, there’s a certain appeal to 600 million yahoos jumping off the earth, preferably right out of our gravity well. In one fell swoop, the clock would be turned back on decades of overpopulation, crowding, abuse of resources etc.
The key, would be getting the right 600 million to jump.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
“You have to admit, there’s a certain appeal to 600 million yahoos jumping off the earth, preferably right out of our gravity well. In one fell swoop, the clock would be turned back on decades of overpopulation, crowding, abuse of resources etc.”
sorry, but that’d only be 1/10 of one percent of the earth’s population.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Rumour Mongerer Says:
“One thing that’s a little unclear. On your page, you seem to be suggesting that the WJDers are saying that when people jump up the earth will shift (and then they fall back), whereas on their website it’s when people come back down, that landing force will make the earth move…”
Regardless who is saying what, it’s an unavoidable fact of Newtonian mechanics that a jumper can only permanently alter Earth’s orbital elements by shoving off at escape velocity. Thus, only a very few acts of human behavior have potentially imparted any change to our planet’s overall path, i.e., the launches of interplanetary spacecraft.
And on second thought, maybe even they didn’t, because of the way such probes are typically placed on their trajectories. They are placed on low parking orbits prior to being projected away from Earth. Since the boost to escape velocity is done tangential to the parking orbit’s path, the rocket and its reaction mass both bypass Earth altogether. So perhaps only the rockets, their payloads, and their exhaust gases have been altered.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Andy, the population is up to 600 billion now? Holy crap. I missed a memo.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
As for average temperature, I’m reminded of:
“A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine.â€
Reminds me of another joke involving a physicist, a chemist and a statistician out duck hunting:
As a duck flies overhead, the physicist takes a shot and misses by a yard to the left.
The chemist takes a shot, and misses a yard to the right.
The statistician jumps to his feet and yells “well done, boys, you got him!”
July 17th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
A new myth is born, soon we will see it in one of those junk emails with a list of amazing facts.
July 18th, 2006 at 12:40 am
If the right 600 million jump at escape velocity…. This reminds me of the HHGTTG story about the planet that was about to explode, so they sent off their entire population in 3 spaceships to colonize another planet. One ship had all the artists, musicians, and other creative types. The 2nd had the engineers, plumbers, doctors and other practical types. The 3rd and most important ship had the most essential people, the marketing executives, pointy-headed managers, lawyes, telephone sanitizers, etc. The 3rd ship crash-landed on the earth about a million years ago, unfortunately wrecking the sophisticated computer that the mice had built to determine the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything (the answer was 42, but the question was still unknown.) Even more unfortunately, the remaining inhabitants of the original planet (which was never actually in any danger of blowing up; the 1st two ships neverf existed) were all wiped out a few years later by a disease spread through unsanitized telephones. Oh well, it was a good effort.
July 18th, 2006 at 2:52 am
One problem I have is when one jumps, the feet, being placed firmly on the ground, and at the impulse to jump, (assuming everyone was syncronised, say the GMT time pip at the top of the clock, make it noon, ( I know it will be an awkward time for some time zones)), but if one is keen enough, then at that impulse, the muscles of the legs will impart force on the ground. First force is on the Earth.
What we have now for a fraction of a second is a body (literally) in a trajectory which soon is about to go into freefall, when all that energy is dissipated. The headlong rush towards the Earth, all half a metre of it, results in a further force down on the said Earth.
So it seems to me that there are 2 (two, count them), forces down on the Earth. Hmmmm, what have I missed?
Irishman, set me straight again. Oh, and a nod to Phil too. Thanks for finding these kooky notions.
Ivan.
July 18th, 2006 at 3:02 am
Ooops, didn’t see the scheduled time on the colored poster/bumper sticker thingie at the top of the item–doh! But my arbitary suggestion of noon was out by only 20 odd minutes (twenty-odd, count them too)!!
Ivan.
July 18th, 2006 at 5:27 am
Did anyone else read that “scientific research” says that all 600 million jumping at the same time will “extend daytime hours”? So, they not only plan to change the rotation of the Earth around the sun, but also slow the Earth’s spin on its axis?
I’m also wondering if their registered number of jumpers is just a “site visit” counter.
They sell t-shirts, too. I can see it now. “I jumped at the same time as 599,999,999 other people, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!”
-Berlie
July 18th, 2006 at 6:18 am
The registered jumpers counter can only be a joke. And Icemith, the “headlong rush towards earth” is caused by gravity, and it results in a force upwards.
July 18th, 2006 at 6:20 am
icemith Says:
So it seems to me that there are 2 (two, count them), forces down on the Earth. Hmmmm, what have I missed?
I think the missing factor is gravity, and the action/reaction law. When you jump you effectively push the Earth away from you. Of course you move far more than the Earth does, but it still moves a minute amount. But then gravity pulls you both back together and cancels out the force – you and the Earth return to the exact same starting point in space, and both velocities cancel out. Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong however.
July 18th, 2006 at 7:51 am
This is very reminiscent of a DangerMouse episode entitled “The Intergalactic 147“.
July 18th, 2006 at 7:57 am
BA,
For yor debunking page: A fourth problem with getting this to work is actually synchronizing the jumpers. A few years ago there was an effort in England to have all school kids jump at once in order to see if it registered on seismographs. I’m a high school physics teacher and was asked about it. In addition to talking about insignificant mass, etc., I also had my class jump “at the same time”. 25 kids who could see each other couldn’t do it without practice- certainly not on a first attempt.
Second, on the debunk page, you say we could affect the orbit of the earth by turning rockets upside down- would the exhaust from those rockets punch through the atmosphere and still escape gravity?
Finally, the “Pull up on your shoes. Are you flying?” bit is hilarious. I’m going to steal it for class.
Malcolm
July 18th, 2006 at 7:57 am
And on the subject of moving the Earth, there was an interesting article in Discover about ten years ago. Amazingly enough, the Internet delivered it to me when I asked, so here you go: Lorne Whitehead’s July 1996 column.
July 18th, 2006 at 8:38 am
A good friend of mine just pointed out something else. Earth now resides in a corridor which is mostly asteroid-free. It’s been swept clear of most of the asteroids by collisions with Earth itself over the past few billion years.
Were Earth to be placed on a new orbit, we’d possibly also be outside that established clean-zone, and be in increased risk of death by rock.
July 18th, 2006 at 8:45 am
How about World Yop Day instead? If you recall, in Dr. Seuss’s story, “Horton Hears a Who,” the inhabitants of Whoville make themselves heard by all yelling “yop” at the same time. Could be fun…
July 18th, 2006 at 8:50 am
Blake Stacey Says:
“And on the subject of moving the Earth, there was an interesting article in Discover about ten years ago.”
This reminds me of the gravitational space-tug that was in the news a while back, for altering the orbits of nuisance asteroids.
July 18th, 2006 at 8:52 am
Actually, this appeared in an article in the National Enquirer a few years ago. It had a title something like “Dastardly plan by the Chinese to knock the Earth out of its orbit.” My physics professor brought it in to discuss Newton’s third law with us. It didn’t teach us much new, but it was fun.
Your article on it was much funnier, though, I must say. And this is despite the fact that that teacher was normally the best comedian; he really didn’t do this ridiculous notion justice.
July 18th, 2006 at 9:09 am
you guys are missing the most insidious aspect of this whole plan: a bunch of folks are going to sign up at the “jump” and “contrajump” pages just to see what happens. then they will be deluged with spam for the remainder of their days. SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!
July 18th, 2006 at 9:14 am
OK, I want to challenge this part:
“I’ll mention that you can move the Earth if you really needed to, and you had several million years to do it. You could turn a bunch of rockets upside-down and fire them so they push down on the Earth. The energy of the exhaust comes from chemicals burning, so in a sense it’s not a closed system.”
Unless the rockets are firing such that some of their exhaust is moving at escape velocity by the time it gets to the top of the atmosphere, it is still a *gravitationally* closed system. The fact that the energy comes from burning chemicals does not open the system any more than the fact that the energy for the jumping is the result of “chemicals burning” inside muscle cells.
The center of mass of the system (Earth + jumpers + exhaust + performance artists + very small rocks + innocent bystanders + lint) won’t be affected even if some portions achieve escape velocity. It’s just that the relative velocity between them will be maintained forever-ish.
Carry on….
–James
P.S. Hi BA! My fiancee and I drove past Sonoma State U over the 4th and thought of you, but couldn’t stop to see if you were around. (Inertia, and all that…)
July 18th, 2006 at 9:15 am
icemith, ioresult and Elwood Herring are correct. Yes, you have two pushes in one direction, but you have gravity acting in the opposite direction as twice the pull. The jump pushes the Earth away, gravity slows it and reverses its direction, and then the landing impact stops the Earth from moving in the other direction. Of course it’s easier to see if you look at the person jumping.
mln84 Said:
>Second, on the debunk page, you say we could affect the orbit of the earth by turning rockets upside down- would the exhaust from those rockets punch through the atmosphere and still escape gravity?
Interesting point. I’m trying to figure out how a rocket would be different than a jumper, and so far cannot. The exhaust would need to escape the gravity well to affect the orbit, wouldn’t it.
July 18th, 2006 at 9:48 am
It’s clearly a hoax – the “Lambda Omega Lambda” (LOL) ‘fraternity’ is behind it. They’re a bunch of hacker-artists trying to change the world
July 18th, 2006 at 9:53 am
Did anyone notice the link in one corner labeled with the Greek letters, Lambda Omega Lambda? That would be equivalent to LOL in English, an abbreviation that should be familiar to anyone on the Internet…
From the Lambda Omega Lambda website, “We create crazy computer things and take part in competitions.”
Most of the site’s in German, so I can’t figure out too much more about it.
July 18th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Elias Friedman Says:
“Did anyone notice the link in one corner labeled with the Greek letters, Lambda Omega Lambda? That would be equivalent to LOL in English, an abbreviation that should be familiar to anyone on the Internet…”
AH! Excellent catch. It all adds up neatly.
I think I saw the link, but didn’t clearly read it ’cause my Firefox adblock tab rests right on top of it.
July 18th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Lambda Omega Lambda is apparantly a fraternity at a University of applied science (? “Fachhochschule”) for Computer Science in Fulda/Germany. The site says broadly that they find their university education lacking and thus seek new ways to a) broaden their knowledge and b) have as much fun as possible along the way.
July 18th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Thought I’d “jump” at the chance to share the link to the website:
How to Destroy the Earth … just in case you wanted to know how.
http://qntm.org/destroy
he specifically addresses the “move the Earth” theory …
http://qntm.org/moving
including that whole “Jump Day” … uh … idea.
Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I must get back to figuring out how to ignite the Earth’s Atmosphere using nothing more than a lighter, some paper towels and a paper clip …
July 18th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Phil, consider this:
moving Earth with an asteroid
July 18th, 2006 at 11:33 am
That link I posted above is a proposal to counteract the effects of the sun’s rising heat output over millions of years–NOT to counteract short term global warming.
I just did a little math on moving Earth’s orbit. Raising its mean distance from the sun by 5% would raise its “total energy” by 1.262 x 10^32 Joules. Over one billion years, that’s 4 x 10^15 watts. If you’d want to keep Earth cool while the sun’s output increases, perhaps using relatively inert reflective aerosols would be the way to go.
July 18th, 2006 at 11:39 am
Sorry for the triple post, I now realize that you wouldn’t need 4 x 10^15 watts of power. As implied by the article, Jupiter would loose orbital energy (spiral inward just a bit), so the total energy of the system wouldn’t necessarily be so high.
July 18th, 2006 at 11:58 am
Thanks Irishman, but I was aware of Gravity and its place in the scheme. How do you figure that it is worth twice the value of the other (opposite) ‘pushes’ as agreed happens in that jump?
So, have I been under a mis-apprehension all my life, in relation to the comment, “Did the Earth move for you too”?
Ivan.
July 18th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Newton must be very pleased people have such a deep and abiding comprehension of “action=reaction”.
Oh, I forgot,,,
He’s DEAD!!!
Gary 7
July 18th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Just a minor point on the debunking – most of us here in New Zealand live in the northern part of the country, with about 1/3 of the population in Auckland. According to the world sandwich, this actually centres our axis of action on the south of Spain, somewhere near Marbella. As I understand it, this is a popular holiday destination with the British, so it raises another issue, and in fact reduces the cancelling out effect. Here in NZ we are obviously all highly coordinated and capable of a simultaneous jump, whereas the British holidaymakers in Marbella are likely to be full of Sangria and Best British Bitter, which considerably impedes their ability to act in unison, thereby imbalancing the opposing forces.
July 18th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
BA, you goofed:
You want earth to be (281/280)^0.5 times as far out, or 0.18% further out.
July 18th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Here is a link to Museum of Hoaxes, with more details about this hoax (and many, many others).
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/world_jump_day/
July 18th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Oops, now I goofed. It should be (280/279)^2 times as far away, or 0.72% farther.
July 18th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
According to the world sandwich, this actually centres our axis of action on the south of Spain, somewhere near Marbella.
If the world were more elastic, you could jump up and down and kind of fling people into the air in Spain.
July 18th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
“Here in NZ we are obviously all highly coordinated and capable of a simultaneous jump”
It is a cross section of those in NZ who have decided to participate in this jump. Is describing it as “obvious” still valid, then?
July 18th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
The debunking page doesn’t even mention the fact that the Earth is not a solid ball. What might happen is a compress and a ripple of the energy through the upper layer of the Earth. This is related to what one of the posters mentioned (see if something similar would register as a seismic activity).
I don’t think that “did the Earth move for you, too” will apply to anyone, not even during jump or landing.
July 18th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Uh, er, ah, when you folks exhaust this current topic, could one or more amongst you visit this site and then explain HOW THE HECK this works? Obviously, I am mathematically challenged. I suppose I could wait for fall and ask someone in my local high school math department, but many of you folks are so skilled at working the numbers, unless this is a really easy problem, I hope one of you might find it challenging enough to explain it.
July 18th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Oh oh; the address didn’t show. Try this: http:digicc.com/fido/
July 18th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Or this: http://digicc.com/fido/
July 18th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Or this: http://digicc.com/fido/ (I forgot the two // in the earlier address.)
July 18th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
icemith,
There are not just two forceful actions at work in that system. There are a minimum of SIX actions of force occurring. When you jump not only do you have to apply force against the ground, but the ground applies an equal amount of force against you. If the ground failed to respond with sufficient force then you would bury your feet into a newly formed hole in the ground. This action has the property of representing two force vectors in opposition to each other.
At every point along the travel both the Earth and yourself are pulling on the other due to the gravitational field you both present. The Earth’s gravity may be pulling you down to it, but you are also pulling the Earth back “up” to you at the same time. This situation also involves two vectors of force in opposition to each other.
I think you can now understand that when you once again land on the ground that not only are you pushing your momentum downwards (momentum which was created by the accelerating force of your gravity and the Earth’s) but the Earth is also pushing it’s momentum upwards into your feet. Once again, two forces acting in opposite fashion.
Imagine you are standing in front of a (large) friend to which you are roped with an elastic cord. You both are pressing your hands against each other as if you are about to push the other away from you. When you push against him, he also must push against you at the same time. This has the effect of stretching the elastic cord, but it isn’t simply stretching in your direction, it’s stretching in his direction too. When you stop pushing against each other the cord contracts again pulling you together. You aren’t just falling towards him, he is also falling towards you – you are both falling towards a common center of mass. When you collide, you both receive an equal share of the total momentum in the system.
In the case of a human v. the Earth, it happens that that tiny tiny infintessimal amount of momentum may be enough to lift a person a foot or so off the ground, but about the only thing it’s capable of doing to the Earth is to disturb the soil a little bit.
July 18th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
I can’t get the correction to the address to register with the keeper of this blog. Just remember, a double forward slash must be behind the colon…
July 18th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
To Will M.: The URL is working. When you subtract one number like that from the other, the resultant has a particular property (add those digits together!). From that the ‘trick’ is simple subtraction.
July 18th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
When I was teaching, students would ask this question almost every year. After reading the BA’s response, I am glad to see that I am in pretty good agreement with my reasoning of why it wouldn’t do anything!
Rob
July 18th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
The fundamental problem with the “jump” theory is that 600 million people jumping up and down get hot and sweaty and will make global warming worse! A better way would be to head-butt the world.
July 19th, 2006 at 7:22 am
The site isn’t serious. It’s just a gag some artist pulled off. Wikipedia talks about it a bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Jump_Day
July 19th, 2006 at 8:27 am
Damn – after I posted I came up with the elastic cord idea too, but HvP has beaten me to it! One small point though – elastic doesn’t behave exactly like gravity (elastic pulls harder with greater distance) but the net effect is the same.
I remember an old Dr. Who episode where the good Doctor, floating in space between two spaceships and unable to reach either, found a cricket ball in his pocket and threw it at one of the ships. (I can’t remember if he was wearing a spacesuit or exactly where he got the ball from, but that’s academic.) Every time he threw the ball away from him, he gained a small amount of momentum in the opposite direction. Then the ball would hit the ship and bouce back to him. He would catch it, and gain a further jolt backwards. By continuing to throw and catch the ball he eventually reached the ship behind him. This is all perfectly possible and doesn’t contrdict any natural laws, and thus would seem to be at odd with the topic we are discussing. However, in the Doctor’s case there is no gravitational pull to speak of, and so his velocity – although tiny – would still be more than the escape velocity of the spaceship he was moving away from.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:13 am
This might just be a considence but I ran “Hans Niesward” through a cryptogram solver and “leap adopters” was one of the solutions (http://www.vandine.biz/crypto_solve.php). Regardless, it’s still kind of funny. It was solution 9 in my results.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Ah haa, thanks HvP, at least I have a better understanding of my confusion. But I wish you hadn’t used in your example, the thought of another person, you know the large, soft person, followed by the male pronoun. It would have been more fun with the alternative! (Alright, I added ’soft”, but they usually are.)
May have made my final passing comment more interesting too.
Ivan.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Also I now understand why New Zealand is called “the Shaky Isles”.
Still trying to get their act together, and all jump at once. At least they are practicing.
Ivan.
July 19th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
To Elwood, that story is “Four to Doomsday”, and while he had a helmet on for air, he was otherwise in his clothes (and he got a cricket ball from his pocket). Don’t ask how he survived decompression…I SAID DON’T ASK!!
July 19th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
Tomorrow may be World Jump Day, but today was plain-old Hump Day.
July 19th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Rumor Mongerer:
Thanks. (Does that fixed sum work on numbers larger than three or four, I wonder? You don’t have to answer; I’ll have to do the research myself.) I guess I need a book on simpler math “tricks.” I once bought a book who’s author was Martin Gardner, but alas, most of the puzzles were far too difficult for me.
July 19th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
Get ready for the results of me thinking about this way too much. A lot of this might be wrong, too, so don’t quote me on anything…
In a chemical rocket the exhaust would weigh the same as the fuel- the energy comes from making/breaking bonds between the reactants. So, if none of the exhaust escaped the earth’s system it wouldn’t move the earth at all.
Now, using nuclear (fusion or fission, choose your flavor) rockets the mass of the exhaust would be less than the mass of the fuel- the extra mass would be carried away as energy by things that can easily escape earth (such as photons). Although, so little mass is actually lost in nuclear reactions (the exhaust weighs *ALMOST* the same as the reactants) that you’d be waiting for a long time. Also, any exhaust would probably fall back down to earth negating its effect, just like chemical rockets. Plus, most of the energy would be absorbed by the atmosphere, or parts of the engine, or whatever and not make it out to space (that’s why nuclear bombs explode- becuase their energy is absorbed by the stuff (air,bomb parts) around it. Otherwise it’d just be a really, really bright light, kinda.). So only a fraction of the mass loss would escape the system, and thus it would work, but you’d be waiting a while. Antimatter rockets would work even better, since more mass would be disappearing into energy.
I also thought of photons moving the earth, since they carry away momentum. Like, if we got a bunch of flashlights, and a bunch of long-life batteries, and pointed them in one direction, then we’d probably move the earth after a while. Also, this would mean that the chemical rockets *would* move the earth without any exhaust escaping, since chemical rockets tend to emit photons. Although nuclear rockets would still be more effective because you’d have the added effect of the mass loss.
Also, it opens up a way to move the earth by people jumping. First step, create a well-insulated tube going from the surface of the earth way up out of the atmosphere. Then put a bunch of people in it at the bottom and have them jump…forever. Basically, all their jumping would do would be to convert their energy into heat pretty inefficiently, and then the heat would be radiated out the top of the tube like a giant infrared flashlight, carrying away momentum and thus moving the earth.
Like I said at the beginning, I thought about this way too much.
July 20th, 2006 at 3:15 am
“The basic problems? People don’t weigh enough to do anything”
Even if they’re americans?
July 20th, 2006 at 6:54 am
World Jump Day…
Well shoot, World Jump Day came and went and I totally forgot to leap at the appropriate moment. Now, for those not in the know, the leap time was 11.39.13 GMT. Now, that’s about 6:39 in the MORNING here. What’s…
July 20th, 2006 at 10:48 am
That was 600 million hippetty-hops for man, one giant yawn for Mankind!
So much for celebrating that other Giant Leap. (and it was too.)
Ivan.
July 20th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
Evolving Squid Says:
…
> You have to admit, there’s a certain appeal to 600 million yahoos
> jumping off the earth, preferably right out of our gravity well. In
> one fell swoop, the clock would be turned back on decades of over-
> population, crowding, abuse of resources etc.
> The key, would be getting the right 600 million to jump.
You think that anyone convinced that this will work and who actually
DOES jump on WJD is NOT a member of the “right 600 million”?
July 20th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
I like Cecil’s answer about this over at Straight Dope. It’s a classic.
July 21st, 2006 at 6:08 am
test
July 21st, 2006 at 6:51 am
A thought just occured to me: WJD says that over 6.0 x 10^8 people registered on the site. What do you suppose the bandwidth cost would be to the owner of a site with that much traffic?
July 21st, 2006 at 9:03 am
Jump Day had nothinbg to do with science at all. I dare say the artist involved (not worthy of repeating his name) knew damned well it was scientific bunk, that the momentum of the Erath through space would be unchanged. But in the realm of Performance Art, what a coup it would be if the artist actually got 600M people to all jump into the air at the same moment! In his mind it would stand as a momentary work of ‘art’ of some note. But realisticaly, it would never have worked except for a few college students who would have a laugh and another beer over their participation. No, I rather think this one creates a new category of ‘art’. the Hypothetical Performance Art. It need never actually be done, it is enough merely to contemplate it. Ah, well, if ou ask me, the vaste majority of Performance Art should have been left as exactly that, thought.
July 24th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
icemith Said:
>Thanks Irishman, but I was aware of Gravity and its place in the scheme. How do you figure that it is worth twice the value of the other (opposite) ‘pushes’ as agreed happens in that jump?
I modeled the two pushes from the jumper as equal, and thus the continued pull of gravity is twice either one. More accurately, the pull of gravity equals the sum of both pushes.
August 14th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
In Soviet Russia,
You FOOLS! It’s not the people who are jumping on the Earth.
The Earth is jumping on you. It will change your orbit around the Sun.
October 18th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
[...] ↑ http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/07/17/world-jump-day-hopping-madness/ [...]
November 20th, 2006 at 4:08 am
[...] Siehe auch: Bad Astronomy, The Huge Entity, nedso.org, nömix, webseeings, J’s Blog und natürlich Wikipedia [...]