If everyone on Earth jumped at the exact same time, exact minute and second, would it affect the Earth?

Question

If we all jumped simultaneously, at the exact same time. Not like 5:00 pm for everyone, but, different time zones for eeryone, but like say, in exactly in 2 minutes, where ever you are.

Answer 1

No.

You've obviously seen the "global jump day" news.

The really funny part is, the dude thought it up as a prank, but the tree-huggers are taking it seriously. This really shows how ignorant these folks are on basic science. And yet they want me to believe them re: global warming... right.

Answer 2

Surprisingly, it would. Although the affect would be too small to measure, even just one person jumping has some kind of effect.

Newton's third law of motion states: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

When you jump you push against the Earth. The amount of force that pushes you into the air also pushes the Earth away from you. But because the Earth is so massive, and there are so many other much stronger forces acting against the Earth at the same time, e.g. the Sun, the Moon, and all the planets, it would be impossible to measure your effect.

Answer 3

It would have some effect, but most likely an unmeasurable one. And even at best it would be neglible.

A little bit of extremely estimated math could construe something like this.

Average human weight: 115 lbs (The majority of populations are not large or overweight)

Approximate population : 6.5 billion

Assuming that jumping would require about 300 lbs of force, (It takes more force than the weight to lift something off the ground with any sort of velocity. and I think doubling the weight is a good estimate for most peoples jumping power.)

That would be 1950 billion lbs of force, which may very well be enough to make some kind of effect.

This is a horrible estimate and I certaintly didn't carry the math as far as some people probably will after this.

But yeah.

Answer 4

No. First, the mass of the earth is millions of trillions times that of the mass of all the humans on the earth. So, the total mass of all humans is insignificant compared to the mass of the earth. What effect would a mosquito have if the mosquito was flying due west and slammed into a 100-ton whale swimming due east?

Secondly, if you jump up and land back down, what about a person directly opposite you on the other side of the earth? If you weigh 100 lbs, and that person also weighs 100 lbs, then he/she lands in the exact opposite direction YOU land, and you would therefore cancel each other's landings.

Answer 5

There are roughly 7 billion people, and the average weight is probably about 70 kg per person. This means that you would have a mass of 490 billion kilograms moving at once.

The mass of the Earth is about 6 x 10^24 kilograms, or 6 trillion trillion kilograms, so the mass of all the people is only 8 hundred trillionths of the mass of the Earth.

In other words, the mass of the world is so great, there would be no measurable effect.

Answer 6

The answer is yes. To quote Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." It has been measured, when an apple falls from a tree and strikes the earth, the earth is moved from it's orbit about the same distance as an atom is wide. Detectable by humans? No. Nevertheless, it happens.

Answer 7

I doubt it. The world is a massive object, and we are but specks on top of it.

Consider this... If all the humans on earth were the size of large grains of sand (about 2 millimeters), then a proportionate ball representing the earth would be about 14.34 km or 8.9 miles in diameter. If the average person could jump up about 12 inches high, then (plugging this into the above proportions), then each grain of sand could jump about 1/3 of a millimeter. Not very high in relation to a 14 km earth, even if there is 5 billion of them.

Thanks for the question! It made me jog my brain.

Answer 8

Well if Everyone on Earth jumped at the same time, that would include people in all hemispheres, so I would say it would kind of counteract any type of effect there may be. But even then, the mass of the Earth is too great and the gravitational forces at work are too great for there to really be any type of effect at all.

Answer 9

Unfortunately nothing would happen. The mass of the human population is not enougt toeffect any change on the earth's rotation or orbit. If it was, another reason there would be no effect is that our population is dispersed throughout the globe so for everyperson that jumps in the United states a person on the otherside of the planet would jump also.

Answer 10

I love this question. It gets brought up in my classroom every year.

One thing to remember. Mother Nature always balances her books. Newton's 1st Law tells us that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Keeping that in mind, lets look at your question...and some of the answers that have been given. Lots of people have pointed out that the mass of the Earth is so much greater than the mass of the entire human population. They are right...especially if you spread the whole population out evenly, you are going to have little or no effect.

Now...let's pretend that you could gather everyone up...the mass of the entire population of the Earth over 100 square miles. Sounds cozy, doesn't it? Now, you have everyone jumping up, and then landing. When you jump, you have to push against the Earth, right? And the Earth presses back, moving ever so slightly toward you hanging in the air. When you land, your mass presses against the Earth, moving it back into position. Keeping in mind, if it moved at all, we are talking about micrometers...but since Mr. Newton provided us with his action and reaction formulas, we know that our action will result in a reaction, leaving a net result of 0.

Answer 11

A simple calculation taking into all masses of men in the world and the mass of earth will show that the force per unit area (pressure) on the earth will be approximately 0.000002N/ m^2.

That is so much pressure is released and exerted in 2 second.

Therefore, it will have negligible effect.