Might As Well Jump
It's an age old question that humans have pondered for centuries. What if all 7,420,000,000 of us gathered in one small spot and jumped simultaneously? Would there be a massive earthquake? Would the earth stop spinning on its axis? Would there be an apocalypse-inducing tsunami?
Before answering these questions, one must first ask themselves "Where exactly would everyone meet up?". Well, surprisingly, if you were to take everyone and stand them shoulder-to-shoulder, the entire human population could fit into the city of Los Angeles! All 7 billion of us could fit into a city that is only about half the size of the state of Rhode Island (LA is 502 square miles). However, this would obviously be very crowded. If you wanted to fit the population of Earth into a larger area with a population density comparable to that of New York City, you could do so using only the states of California and Oregon. So apparently we're wasting a lot of valuable space...
If for some reason we all wanted to meet at T.F. Green Airport, that wouldn't be possible. Using Google Maps and the scale tool, I was able to find that the area of the main runways at T.F. Green Airport is about 960,000 square meters. This equates to about 3.71 square miles. So we would need about 136 T.F. Green Airports to hold the population of Earth. The more you know.
But suppose, somehow, all of the inhabitants of Earth agree to meet up in Los Angeles. Billions of people travel from all over to globe to meet up in a city populated by a mere 4 million people. Everyone agrees to jump at the exact same moment in time. What would happen? Would the very fabrics of the universe itself fall apart?
No, probably not. Though the total mass of our population is an astronomically large number, it has nothing on the 5.9736 x 10^24 kg mass of the Earth. Earth outweighs the mass of its population by over ten trillion times. Even with a decently high jump, the planet would only be pushed down ever so slightly by a very, very small number. Some physicists have actually done the math on this very situation, and they've found that Earth will only move away from us at 1/100th of the width of a hydrogen atom. The earth will only have a recoil velocity of about 2.6 x 10^-13 m/s. So yea, it doesn't look like that apocalypse is happening after all.
For comparison, the weight of the former American aircraft carrier USS Enterprise is about 85,982,970 kilograms. Even if our entire population were replaced with aircraft carriers rather than humans, the mass of the Earth would still be (5.9736 x 10^24/6.38 × 10^17 = 9.36 x 10^6) 9.36 x 10^6 times larger than its population. Evidently, its going to take A LOT of weight to knock this rock off its course.
Sources:
Allain, Rhett. “What If Everyone Jumped?” Wired, Conde Nast, 26 Aug. 2010, www.wired.com/2010/08/what-if-everyone-jumped/.
"Everybody Jump" what-If.xkcd,
what-if.xkcd.com/8/.
Rettner, Rachael. “The Weight of the World: Researchers Weigh Human Population.” LiveScience, Purch, 17 June 2012,
www.livescience.com/36470-human-population-weight.html.
Before answering these questions, one must first ask themselves "Where exactly would everyone meet up?". Well, surprisingly, if you were to take everyone and stand them shoulder-to-shoulder, the entire human population could fit into the city of Los Angeles! All 7 billion of us could fit into a city that is only about half the size of the state of Rhode Island (LA is 502 square miles). However, this would obviously be very crowded. If you wanted to fit the population of Earth into a larger area with a population density comparable to that of New York City, you could do so using only the states of California and Oregon. So apparently we're wasting a lot of valuable space...
If for some reason we all wanted to meet at T.F. Green Airport, that wouldn't be possible. Using Google Maps and the scale tool, I was able to find that the area of the main runways at T.F. Green Airport is about 960,000 square meters. This equates to about 3.71 square miles. So we would need about 136 T.F. Green Airports to hold the population of Earth. The more you know.
But suppose, somehow, all of the inhabitants of Earth agree to meet up in Los Angeles. Billions of people travel from all over to globe to meet up in a city populated by a mere 4 million people. Everyone agrees to jump at the exact same moment in time. What would happen? Would the very fabrics of the universe itself fall apart?
No, probably not. Though the total mass of our population is an astronomically large number, it has nothing on the 5.9736 x 10^24 kg mass of the Earth. Earth outweighs the mass of its population by over ten trillion times. Even with a decently high jump, the planet would only be pushed down ever so slightly by a very, very small number. Some physicists have actually done the math on this very situation, and they've found that Earth will only move away from us at 1/100th of the width of a hydrogen atom. The earth will only have a recoil velocity of about 2.6 x 10^-13 m/s. So yea, it doesn't look like that apocalypse is happening after all.
For comparison, the weight of the former American aircraft carrier USS Enterprise is about 85,982,970 kilograms. Even if our entire population were replaced with aircraft carriers rather than humans, the mass of the Earth would still be (5.9736 x 10^24/6.38 × 10^17 = 9.36 x 10^6) 9.36 x 10^6 times larger than its population. Evidently, its going to take A LOT of weight to knock this rock off its course.
 |
| No, not the starship |
Allain, Rhett. “What If Everyone Jumped?” Wired, Conde Nast, 26 Aug. 2010, www.wired.com/2010/08/what-if-everyone-jumped/.
"Everybody Jump" what-If.xkcd,
what-if.xkcd.com/8/.
Rettner, Rachael. “The Weight of the World: Researchers Weigh Human Population.” LiveScience, Purch, 17 June 2012,
www.livescience.com/36470-human-population-weight.html.
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