What if everyone jumped at the same time?
ArabiaWeather - Ready... Get ready... Jump! It's hard to imagine getting everyone on Earth to jump at the same time - although with all kinds of social media, it's easier to believe in the possibility than it used to be.
Anyway, about 8 billion - that's the number of people living on this planet - which is a lot to put together to do anything at the same time. But let's say we can really get everyone involved.
What would happen if everyone jumped at the same time?
If everyone jumped at the appointed time, not much would happen. The mass of people, although fairly large, is not so great as to be comparable to the mass of the Earth, especially if we are all so spread out.
But since we're imagining here, what if we could gather everyone on Earth in one place to jump at the same time? If more than 7 billion humans jumped next to each other, we would fill about 805 square kilometers (500 square miles), or a city the size of Los Angeles. Even in this imaginary scenario, if we assumed we could all stand this close and all jump at the same time, not much would happen.
If everyone jumped at the same time...would a disaster happen?
Disappointing, isn't it? The mass of this many people would seem large to all of us, but compared to the mass of the Earth, they would be like tiny creatures on a grain of dust, just like in the story of Horton the Little Elephant in Dr. Seuss's book. In fact, if we all jumped together, we would move the Earth very little (less than the width of a hydrogen atom) when we launched. Then when we all land back down to the same place, the Earth will be back in the same place it was if we hadn't jumped at all
Can the Earth's location change?
So, what does it take to move land? In fact, this is a question scientists ask because the sun is getting hotter. Earth's temperature is expected to become 120 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) warmer by about 1.1 billion years, which will make it impossible for life on Earth as we know it to survive.
When considering this possibility, some have studied how Earth might be moved slightly away from this growing fireball. Here at the beginning of the 21st century, such technology is not available - and may never be. Let's think about this: to change the Earth's speed by 20 nanometers per second (a very small amount, when we consider that a human hair is between 80,000 and 100,000 nanometers wide), you would have to launch a billion 11-ton (10-ton) rockets at the same instant In the same direction.
If you want, you can get all your friends together to jump down and try hard to make the ground shake. It'll be a great workout - but don't expect to move mountains.
Source: howstuffworks
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