What if everyone on earth stood in a line, all facing in the same direction...and started running?

Similar questions: earth stood line facing direction started running.

No. While the mass of six billion people is kind of alot, compared to the mass of the earth they weigh almost nothing at all. Also, the mass of the moon is influencing the earth’s rotation, so compared to the mass of the earth-moon system, six billion people weigh even less.

Supposing that it did make a day one second longer or one second shorter when the six billion people first started to run, they would have to stop running at some point, and the earth’s rotation would be restored to normal. There would be no net gain or loss of momentum. Mass of Earth = 5.9742 × 1024 kilograms mass of all people = 6 x 10^11 kilograms It would be like adding or subtracting one speck of dust from a bowling ball.

However, if everyone on earth turned on every faucet in the house and continously flushed every toilet for ten hours, the earth would speed up its rotation a miniscule amount, because a significant amount of water would move from a higher altitude to a lower altitude. Like a skater pulling in her arms and spinning faster, moving a fraction of a percent of the earth’s water closer to the core would redistribute its mass enough to make a tiny difference. Maybe it would make a day one second shorter?

At least until rain filled the reservoirs again. badastronomy.com/bad/news/worldjumpday.html This link has some calculations on what would happen if 600 million people jumped at the same time. (nothing.) Sources: that portion of physics class for which I managed to stay awake.

Video .

More exercise. We would be getting more exercise than usual, some who probably need it, but not much else. Consider 6.6 billion people, at say a generous 100kg each, this makes 660 million metric tonnes of people on the planet.

The mass of the earth is about 5.97E24 kg. The ratio of mass of people to the mass of the Earth is 1.1e-13, that is people add up to 0.0000000000001.1 of one earth mass. Thus if we did all run in the same direction at the same time it would slow or speed up the Earth very, very, very slightly.

Even if we ran all day the amount would be too small to measure with just about any instrument. Maybe it could be measured with something like the GPS system, but the Earth has a lot of small variations in it’s rotation to start with from tides, weather patterns and other factors. The difference we could make by running would be lost in the noise of any measurement I can imagine.An interesting idea, but there are not that many of us yet that we can effect the planet that way.

But there are enough of us to effect the planet in a lot of other ways. SiliconOwl's Recommendations Population and Food: Global Trends and Prospects (Global Environmental Change Series) Amazon List Price: $46.95 Used from: $2.89 .

No simple physics. The mass of the earth is far greater than even people and machines.

In theory, there would be an influence. Technically, if everyone on Earth lined up and started running, they would have an effect on the rotation of the Earth, because they’d be accelerating against the Earth. Their angular momentum would be added or subtracted (depending on which way they ran) from that of the Earth.As soon as they slowed down and stopped, though, the equation would equal back out again and the Earth’s rotation would be left, overall, unchanged.

Not that we would notice a change even while everyone was running. I was curious enough to pose this question to my spouse, who is a physicist, and he was curious enough to haul out a pad of paper and calculator, and actually worked it out (with a lot of assumptions built in, so the end result is an estimate). I lost track somewhere around converting radians per second into a linear velocity, but in the end, if we assume six billion people running at average human running speed with a force equal to their weight (100 KG for simplicity), he came up with a difference in velocity of 6.79 x 10^-15 kph... or 0.00000000000000679 kph.

Even with all six billion of us working together, we just don’t have enough mass to matter at all compared to the Earth. Sources: A couple of pages of quick and dirty calculations..

No, not at all! Most would tire out rather quickly. The thought of influencing the earth's rotation to any great degree by such a silly action to me over-estimates human impact on our world.

Would elephants, horses, cattle, dogs, frogs and fishes be with us too? Maybe all whales and sharks swimming leading all the fish swimming in the same direction, maybe that would accomplish more? Would we run in unision, would an olympic athlete slow his pace to match that of nursing home dwellers?

Or would each go his or her own pace? Well ...

In the movie " The Day The Earth Stood Still.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.