What happens if everyone jumped at the same time

Science Vs. What If. What if everyone on Earth jumped at the same time? Everyone on Earth jumping at the same time is pretty improbable and the effect would be pretty insignificant.

Census Bureau. Sources Allain, Rhett. May 25, Cite This! Try Our Crossword Puzzle! What Is the Missing Number? Using the laws of conservation of momentum and energy, Allain, a physicist at the University of Southeastern Louisiana and blogger at Dot Physics, calculated what would happen to the 6-trillion-trillion-kilogram Earth under these circumstances.

For simplicity's sake, he assumed the average human could jump one foot 30 cm high and that we'd all be jumping from exactly the same point. To cut to the chase, Allain found that our jump would push on the Earth ever so slightly, giving it a recoil speed of 2. That is, in one second, Earth would move about a hundredth of the radius of a single hydrogen atom.

It's not so much, but would the infinitesimally small recoil last forever? The rest would disperse out into the air and ground, leading to some harrowing consequences:.

Despite all this happening on the ground, though, the effects wouldn't be felt in outer space. Sorry, but more than 7 billion jumping people aren't a good way to shift the Earth's orbit, no matter how cool it would be.

For you. World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. This is one of the most popular questions submitted to this blog. They cover the kinematics pretty well. This crowd takes up an area the size of Rhode Island. This is our scenario; we can be specific. Earth outweighs us by a factor of over ten trillion. On average, we humans can vertically jump maybe half a meter on a good day.

A slight pulse of pressure spreads through the North American continental crust and dissipates with little effect. The sound of all those feet hitting the ground creates a loud, drawn-out roar which lasts many seconds.

A cell phone comes out of a pocket.