World Jump Day is Coming!

Well, I did say "crazy solution" many times ;-)

um, is it just me, or does this seem a bit risky, to try to change the Earth's orbit!!!!!

This is stupid! How could this possibly work and how would that even be a proper solution?

The ultimate solution to global warming is ecological responsibility! Half baked shortcuts aren't going to provide a solution at all.

One moment too late or soon and we all go flying into the Sun....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion

How does jumping at the same time put more ozone back up?

in order for this to actually work. everyone has to jump at EXACTLY the same time....... you need some sort of international TV broadcast to keep everyone sync........

also, it may not work because everyone has to be on one side of the earth........... Damn..

we dont really have to worry about making the orbit going off... we could always jump again to get it back to normal if things go wrong.... ¬_¬ or jump and make a different orbit..

Well if the orbit of the earth changes into a larger circumference, wont the year be longer than 365days? That means the commonly used calander system should be changed.
Also, I think the orbit will slowly come back to its original orbit because of the pull from the sun.

That's just so stupid. The conservation of momentum will ensure that those people are just making asses of themselves. The only way the jump would make _any_ difference is that the jumpers would exceed the escape velocity of Earth and end up in space (which actually might be a more suitable place for such morons).

this is ridiculous - IT IS A HOAX PEOPLE!
The force of the jump gets cancelled as you are attracted back down to earth, nothing changes. For this to work, you would have to jump off the surface of the earth and into space - or at escape velocity of tens of thousands of kms per hour. If this were to work, antigravity devices would exist - they don't - this is impossible.

I don't think this is okay to change earths orbit even a little bit it's not okay to challenge mother nature

DO NOT JUMP IT IS ONlY WAISTING YOUR TIME

overall i think its a stupid idea because we'd have to buy brand new watches and anything time related evryone would probably get SAD (Seasonal Alteration Depresion) and its not good to toy with the laws of nature but in a way i think it might work (emember i said might whch means im not with the idea) but if they mess it up it wont be a tragedy, a catastrophe, or anything else it will be beyond our scale of badness hopefully they wont have enough people and we wont get catapulted into outer space

im totally gonna jump

Won't we have more severe winters then. And also, the whole world will change....Stock Markets,....The clock....time.....computers.....

If it works, then human beings are making a mass catastrophe upon themselves. THese paid by the gov scientists wanna escape paying money to reduce pollution and do it right.

Instead now they are meddling with someting that will bring doom for some million of anti science idiots.

I can't imagine a server capable of sending 600 millions of emails a day before the "event". This is just a spammer hoax!

This is a joke right? A little physics should convince you how incredibly stupid this is.

1. For a person to jump off the surface of the Earth, Newton's Third Law guarantees that the Earth will feel a reaction force equal and opposite to the force generated by jumping. This then to an excellent approximation cancels the impulse of the force generated on impact. The only effect of 6 billion jumping human beings will be lots of sore kneecaps and a few stress lines in concrete all over the world, and the earth's days changing ever so slightly in duration.

2. Imagine for a moment that Newton's Third Law is suspended. Then if the average person weighs 60 kg and manages to attain an impact velocity of 10 m/s in one jump, the collective momentum imparted by 6 billion jumping human beings is 3.6x10^12 J.s. This is enough momentum to change the velocity of the earth (with a mass of 6.0x10^24 kg) a grand total of 6x10^-11 m/s. Considering the orbital velocity of the earth is 30 km/s, this change is as good as nothing.

3. Celestial mechanics guarantees that if escape velocity is not attained, the earth will only be perturbed about its current orbit. The average distance from the earth to the sun will not change; instead the proposed actions (multiplied ten-quadrillion fold, i.e getting everyone to jump once a day at the right time for 27 billion years) will only succeed in wobbling the earth's orbit, the least of which would result in climatic chaos. The animation on the website is completely bogus.

4. The only possible effect on the earth would be changing its angular momentum. Assuming the average human stays aloft for two seconds during the jump, the angular change of the earth due to rotation is 0.5'. So the maximum possible change in angular momentum due to World Jump Day is 1.3x10^8 J.s, which is enough to change the earth's angular momentum about its axis (which is 1.8x10^34 J.s) by a factor of 7x10^-27, which would reduce the length of the day by 6 x 10^-21 s.

Geez, and professional scientists wonder why the public continues to be ignorant of science.

I'm not much of a physics scientist, but I'd like to make what might be a stupid observation. If you're on a chair that has wheels, you can move yourself by first slowly shifting your weight, and then moving yourself in the other direction quickly. This is because when you shift your weight slowly, the friction and inertia of the chair prevent it from moving, am I correct? I think a similar principle could apply to vertical maneuvers on an earth which feels gravity from the sun. I figure, if everybody gets on chairs slowly, and then jumps, something would happen. Well, I figure something would happen if the earth wasn't ridiculously heavier than a million people. Chances are something still isn't going to happen in this case anyways, but I think that probably the people getting on chairs slowly would make no effect, but the people jumping off of chairs would have the effect of a fall from the height of the chair which isn't cancelled out by the jumping motion.

riiight... and if we jump backwards we will go back in time.

Wow, a lot of people didn't get the joke :)

who ever came up with this idea is retarded

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I think you missed the joke. -Ed

This is just an art project/hoax of some sort, the earth's orbit will not change because 600 million people jump at the same time. A 13 year old girl can easily figure that out. *cough*

i think this is the most wonderful idea i've ever heard, we're having a jumping party, we've gotten together a lot of people. we have drinks and food, come join us, be one of us. (we're also dropping heavy stuff) jump or die

I hope you are kidding...Both websites are stupid and pointless, because first of all, the earth won't move...even if all 6 billion people were to jump at the exact same time in the exact same place on the surface of the earth. And then, it would only move half the radius of a hydrogen atom, and then subsequently move back. Look on wikipedia...they've got all the math on there. Then, this website is stupid because you all actually think you have to stop these people from jumping...pathetic. IT'S NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING. JUST SIT IN YOUR CHAIR AND MOCK THE STUPID LIBERALS THAT ARE PARTICIPATING.
There. I'm done with my ranting and raving.

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Editor note: Of course it was a joke.

This isn't a hoax or a joke, it is just a very clever art project. I think knowing that makes me like it even more. That one artist can provoke so much discussion is incredible!

Link to artist's website:

http://www.axisartists.org.uk/ofSARF.aspx?SELECTIONID=50

To synchronize have radio stations play Van Halen's Jump so people will know exactly when to go.

for people who are supposed to be smart about the enviornment, we're certainly a little slow today... yes, it is a joke :)

Maybe it's a joke as many say, maybe it isn't, but if it's not, have you ever thought that, this "action" might cause earthquakes and maybe lots of those terrible tsunami's all over the world which could drown millions of people? Bring to your mind scenes from the movie "the Impact" and think that maybe things like that could happen as a result to this "operation"... Maybe then I get too carried away but even if there is just a slight possibility for either of these to happen, it will be a good reason NOT to jump!

I imagine disaster might end up to be the result to this project! Just think about it, maybe instead of rescueing the planet it destroys it even more! Do NOT mess with the laws of nature! Spread the message to everyone you know intending to jump, NOT TO DO IT!

Don't listen to people who say this won't work. They're all in the employ of the anti-jump industry. There is finally a concensus among scientists and all agree this will work. Don't be duped by the anti-jumpers.

This is just silly:

- The orbit of the Earth about the Sun will not be changed at all, because the center of mass of the (Earth + jumping-morons) system will not be affected.

- If everyone jumps straight up, the rate of rotation of the Earth will not be affected at all. (This is unlike the case of the playground merry-go-round, where you are still attached physically to the MGR when you lean outward, so that you and it will have the same angular velocity.)

- This is not a "liberal" vs. "conservative" issue. This is an issue of basic physics.
- Only if everyone jumps in the same direction (say, eastward) will there be an impact on the rotation of the Earth. But that will be cancelled out when people walk back to where they were before.

- With everyone scattered over the globe, I would have a very hard time believing this will have any impact on tsunamis, etc.: it will all cancel out.

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editor note: It was a joke.

I don't know about you nay-sayers but count me in. I might even start jumping now.

This is a hoax; the physics of this are no different than jumping in an elevator or trying to lift up a tub while sitting in it.

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editor note: You call it "hoax", we call it "joke".

What WOULD work, however, is if we lined up all our commercial jets -- 747s, DC10s, etc. -- and any other jet planes, Airforce, etc., and bolted them to the ground somehow, with their noses pointed at the Earth, and then thrusted their engines full blast, that would push the Earth into another orbit.

Has anyone else out there read Jules Verne's "The Purchase of the North Pole"?

"The Purchase of the North Pole" by Jules Verne is about a bunch of guys who figure there's enough coal under the polar icecap to fuel the world for a long time. They figure that if they build a giant cannon in a mountain in (if memory serves me) somewhere in South America and fire a large enough bullet out of it with the right amount of powder the recoil will tip the Earth on it's axis so the icecap melts and they can mine the coal. Typical Verne and a heckuva good read.

First of all the only thing that is looked at in this solution is the Global Warming Process, the alignment of the stars, and the distance to the moon, and gravtational issues with the moon, and comets, meteors and other things of that nature are not taken into account. What about the A-Bombs dropped in the Far East or the other meteorits that have struck the earth with force in the neighboorhood of 10 million mega tons of Force, with 600 million people at the average weight of 200 lbs the force multiplier that we is about 54.5 mega tons not even in the ball park if you look at it.

Not that I do math in public, but please allow me to make this humble comment: Providing that the average (mean) mass of earth’s 6 billion inhabitants is 100kg (a gross overstatement, but the numbers are better). That would make their collective mass 6x1011kg. Furthermore, let’s say that all these people have fused into one sphere of that mass. If we assume that acceleration due to gravity on earth is 10ms-2 then if the mass jumps one and one fourth meters it will land with a velocity of 5ms-1.
Energy produced by the jump would equal to roughly 75x1011 Joules or 7.5 TJ (tera-joules). 7.5 TJ is approximately 2% of the energy released by one Megaton of TNT, which is also the size of a modern H-Bomb.
In otherwords folks, we cant get there from here. All we are going to do is stir up some dust. Perhaps we need to do more loving and breeding to get the number of jumpers up. In closing, I also think that we humans are stirring up more dust in Lebanon and Iraq than the Jump Day would ever stir up. So you guys go ahead and jump if it makes you feel happy.

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editor note: Once again, it's a joke. Seems to be working very well too!

"riiight... and if we jump backwards we will go back in time." -Anonymous

Im liking this guys comment.

If you believe this.. you need some help. Really.

Im TOTALLY going to Jump!! seriously.. the guy who came up with the brilliant idea got what he wanted, "fame" & exposure.

I'm Jumping!!!!

Editor, thank you for a bunch of really good entertainment. I must admit that I also did a bit of math when I first heard of WJD. This has produced some really great reading and a lot of discussion around the office. I, for one, am going to jump just for the privilege of being able to razz my brother 'cause he didn't and I can bug him about not caring about global warming. Thanks a bunch.

Dude...so what if it doesnt work? You'll be jumping with 600 million other people...how freaking sweet is that???

Plus you'll just feel good knowing that you did something...even if it is futile. I still think it will work though...or we all burn and die WHOOPIE!

It looks like it didn`t work :-S

Hi all. I believe this. I make few jumpes in that time.
:)

Not only can we help stop global warming, but we can work off all the calories gained from the Cindy Sheehan fast!

It's true that you can't effect Earth's orbit by jumping, however, we can change our axis of orbit if everyone in the Western hemisphere runs north and everyone in the Eastern hemisphere runs south at the same time!

As long as people don't need to go back to where they ran from. *shrug*

Okay sum people just dont have a sense of humour even if it doesnt work its not that Im sayin its goin to work but it just shows that a few million people out there really care about global warming or that they're just feelin guilty coz they contributed to global warming and their asses are gonna get fried. What Im tryin to say is that if the sum of all energy used to jump around the world was used to clean up our own backyard, plant more trees and recycle more we might as well be saving our asses for the future.Kapish!!

Are you all a bunch of idiots? I have a place you can jump...try a bridge!!!

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editor note: This comment was approved for its comedic value.

Ok, all of you Nay-sayers:
It was NOT a joke!
Just look at the path of Tropical Storm Beryl! All of you Treehuggers who participated in the World-Jump helped to save Cape Cod and the Kennedy Compound.

Thank you so much for all that you have done!