if everyone on earth ran in the same direction
Of course, it wouldn't be measurable even with the entire population. If everyone in the United States ran in the same direction, could we spin the earth enough for it … Only if they did so in the right direction. no comments yet. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Put otherwise, we would increase or decrase (depending on which way we ran) the length of a day by 0.0000000002 seconds. If we do the math, the weight of all humans is only 0.00000000000007041667% compared to the weight of the planet. If you create a force on the earth to jump in the air, no matter how many times you do it, and no matter how many people you get to join up, the center of gravity between you and the earth will always remain exactly the same. As others here have correctly stated, it is all because of conservation of angular momentum. This states that the angular momentum of a closed system remains constant. save. They're al… ON the Earth, all directions are not relative, their fixed. True. Close. Yes, if everyone ran in one direction, it would affect the spin of the earth. (This is not the final definition.) However on an interesting side note, there are changes in the length of day that need to be calculated to keep GPS errors down, as the small changes in length of day need to be taken into account to properly pinpoint the satellite positions and correct clock times. I've got to assume that everybody reading this has an idea of what distance is. But the rod is also moving in the same direction at 99.5% the speed of light. To change the direction/speed of an object in motion, you need to exert a large enough force to overcome its momentum. You are correct though, that the total force would be negligible and one would not be able to reliably notice any difference. Wouldnt we all end up having to stop at the edge of the pacific ocean? New Scientist Ltd retains total editorial control over the published content and reserves all rights to reuse question and answer material that has been submitted by readers in any medium or in any format. Earth's obliquity oscillates between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees on a 41,000-year cycle. In January and February, Earth’s rotation slows by a few milliseconds per day. w_r = w_s +/- (m_p/((2/5)*m_e+m_p))*w_pe. Physicist here. We reserve the right to edit items for clarity and style. If Earth were to change acceleration, we'd certainly feel that, and it wouldn't be pleasant, like a sudden slam on the brakes at a planetary scale (while the atmosphere would keep moving at the same 465 metres per second and wipe the surface of the planet). Avi asked: The Earth turns around its axis at a speed of around 1,800km/h. This … Every few million/billion years the iron core shifts its direction of spin. An ant running over my foot while I float in the International Space Station would have more effect on my rotation because its weight is more comparable to mine than that of Earth’s population is to Earth. The main effect of the runners on Earth would happen when they start. The opposite sense of rotation or revolution is (in Commonwealth English) anticlockwise (ACW) or (in North American English) counterclockwise (CCW). There would be no detectable effect on Earth’s rotation, no matter how fast people accelerate when they start to run. As others here have correctly stated, it is all because of conservation of angular momentum. You can also submit answers by post to: The Last Word, New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ES. Atmospheric and ocean currents also take up a little of the angular momentum, a hurricane creates quite a large impact on the length of day for GPS satellites. It would take people running at this velocity around 10 years to move Earth’s surface by the width of a human hair. When you return to your natural position, so will the earth. Once the group of people are running, they have a certain amount of angular momentum, so the counterrotating Earth must have an equal and opposite angular momentum. This website is horribly misconstruing science. The key point being: what happens to the world while everyone is away, and how do they all get home? , published 26 October 2019, Changing a child's route to school can halve exposure to air pollution, Thousands of starlings fly together to make an enormous bird, Covid-19 news: Fears of third wave grow as infections rise in Europe, Think yourself younger: Psychological tricks that can help slow ageing, Mark Carney interview: Rethink capitalism to solve the climate crisis, Pollinators are our secret weapon in the fight against global warming, Llamas and alpacas carry genes from mysterious ‘ghost’ relatives, Perseverance’s first month on Mars has yielded new sights and sounds. Whats more how does the hurricane cause this to exis the system if that is the case? We would actually go back in time too. Their speeds relative to Earth are 0.80c for asteroid 1 and 0.60c for asteroid 2. Avi Loeb: Is ‘Oumuamua extraterrestrial technology? However, I do surmise that we'd all get smelly pits if we tried. Only the component of the spinning person's angular momentum in the same direction as the Earth's angular momentum maters. What would happen if everyone ran the in the same direction that the earth rotated? New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. It is always spinning and causes the earth to spin with it. Solution: Chapter 29 Relativity Q.41P Two rocket ships approach Earth from opposite directions, each with a speed of 0.8c relative to Earth. share. Many years ago (early-mid 80s, I think) the Weekly World News ran a story about how the Chinese were planning such a coordinated jump, in order to knock the Earth out of orbit. Two-dimensional rotation can occur in two possible directions. (You cause some change in speed on your way back; think of it as balancing on a log in a lake.). There is another factor to take into account. The North Pole and South Pole are the two major diving lines, with the Equator being another and GMT being yet another. You are given the speed of the system according to the observer on Earth, so it is easiest if Earth is the ' frame. What would happen if everyone ran the in the same direction that the earth rotated? Most coastal areas, with some exceptions, experience two high tides and two low tides every lunar day (Ross, D.A., 1995). You should be able to convince yourself that the only way this can happen is if the two objects start off in the same direction and at the same speed. best. The weight is only relevant in that it determines the amount of friction between us and the surface (and thus how much force we tangentially put on the Earth when running). Also, w_p=w_r +/- w_pe, where w_pe is the angular velocity of the people with respect to the earth. With a little arithmetic it turns out that the light will need 200 seconds to make the forward trip . Can we rid the sky of them? Marty, I must remind you incest is illegal in most states. If everybody were running around the equator of the earth the angular momentum of the people would be L_p=m_p*r^2*w_p where m_p is the mass of the people. It's one of those innate concepts that doesn't seem to require explanation. Questions should be scientific enquiries about everyday phenomena, and both questions and answers should be concise. One clock stayed on Earth, while the other flew in an airplane (going in the same direction Earth rotates). hide. T_s/T_r = 1 +/- (m_p*v_pe*T_s)/(2*pi*r*((2/5)*m_e+m_p)). Horses may recognise themselves in a mirror, hinting at self-awareness, Fukushima 10 years on: Life inside the exclusion zone. Think of ocean currents and tides too. Angular momentum, L, is L=Iw where I is the moment of inertia of the object and w is its angular velocity. How does the energy/angular momentum of the earth get transferred to the hurricane? But then when everyone stops the Earth rotation speed will get back to normal. So the light has to chase after a rapidly fleeing end and will need much more than a second to catch it. Log in or sign up to leave a comment Log In Sign Up. This means that wherever you are on the Earth, the force is always "down" into the ground. You get the idea. No. Can I refer you to Randall Munroe’s analysis of “everyone in the world jumping together” as a reason not to try this, even to answer a science question. When they stop, they exert a push in the opposite direction, which cancels out the starting push. This equates to a block of land 1 square kilometre by 250 metres deep; or a square km of water 800 m deep; or a volume of air 30 km by 30 km by 1 km. A few years earlier and you could've been a part of something even bigger. After the airplane flew around the world, scientists compared the two clocks. Posted by just now. Herman D’Hondt, Newtown, New South Wales, Australia. Aircraft contrails are a climate menace. Math is easiest if the prime (') frame is that of the observer whose measurement you know . The supposed reason for this is the Coriolis effect, which has to do with the effect of the earth… Seasonal climatic shifts, by comparison, do have a measurable effect. Based on a continuously updated formula, Earth's mean obliquity is currently 23°26′11.6″ (or 23.43655°) and decreasing. Almost everyone is familiar with the concept of a 24-hour solar day, which is the time that it takes for a specific site on the Earth to rotate from an exact point under the sun to the same … To quantify the effect, we use the physical law of conservation of angular momentum. Hence, the overall effect consists only of the force needed to overcome air resistance. If everyone ran west, yes. r/AskReddit is the place to ask and answer thought-provoking questions. Malcolm Cunningham, Paraparaumu, New Zealand. If the world’s population all met in one place and all ran in the same direction, would this affect Earth’s rotation? Once the group of people are running, they have a certain amount of angular momentum, so the counterrotating Earth must have an equal and opposite angular momentum. In the case that the people are standing (s) the total angular momentum is, In the case that the people are running (r) with angular velocity w_p the total angular momentum is, Because of conservation of angular momentum L_s=L_r. Neap tides occur when the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon form a right angle, at first and last quarters for the Moon. Sign up to read our regular email newsletters. Posted by 4 years ago. Substituting these in and rearranging we get. If the person is in New Orleans, the latitude is about 30 degrees. Yes, by a very tiny insignificant bit if you ran in the correct direction, however, as soon as everyone stopped... the earth would return to its original rotation speed. Also bear in mind that the earth will return to its natural position (not just speed) when everyone decides to go back home. The odd thing is that sometimes we state distances as times. The interwebs tell me that the Earth weighs approximately 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms and that all of the people on earth weighs 422.5 billion kilograms. Using w=2*pi/T where T is period of rotation, and w_pe=v_pe/r where v_pe is the velocity people run at, we get. To answer this question – or ask a new one – email lastword@newscientist.com. If everyone in the world ran in the same direction at the same time would this change the way the world spins? However, bear in mind that earth would go back to its normal speed when everyone stopped running. Sort by. Launching yourself into space, however, is a different story. When I ran my first marathon, two people joined me on the journey because they could see how by increasing the amount of time we ran by 5-10 minutes per week would lead to us being able to run … Find the speed of asteroid 1 relative to asteroid 2. Close. Archived. Don’t Miss: Rob Dunn on flavour‘s role in human evolution, Silk Road review: The true story of the dark web's illegal drug market. This is my back of envelope calculation. "Unless you're within 10 or so miles of the poles, in which case a brisk westerward walk will take you legitimately west." The "distance" is the answer to the question, "How far is it from this to that or between this and that?" 0 comments. Our mass is tiny even compared with the moving air masses we call weather. Yes. TL;DR Yeah, but humans are insignificant. “Yes," Vorkosigan agreed, "I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.” ― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour tags: army , idiots , world-domination If everyone ran at 10 kilometres per hour, the opposite velocity of the surface of Earth would be about 10-13 metres per second. Furthermore, let's consider what happens if two objects start off along the same path in space-time. Earth’s atmosphere is estimated to have a mass of more than 5 × 1018 kg, which is about 1 millionth of Earth’s total mass, but far more than the mass of its people. The erroneous bit of folk wisdom you refer to says water always drains in a clockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere and in a counterclockwise direction in the Northern Hemisphere. 8 8. "Yes, to go west, you go east - just slower than Earth is going east," says Henry Reich in the video above. Humanity isn’t collectively as heavy as you might think. Figure 14.13: Spring tides occur when the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon are aligned, increasing the gravitational pull on the oceans.Sometimes, the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the Earth while at other times, they are on the same side. This expression is dominated by the ratio of the mass of people to the mass of Earth. In other words, the total effect is too small to be measurable. Earth has a mass of around 6 × 1024 kilograms, and that of its 7.5 billion people totals about 4 × 1011kg, making the planet about 10 trillion times more massive than us. The wind might blow the plane 1000 miles in one direction, but the Earth will have moved 1000 miles in that same direction, so it makes no difference. That’s because their mass is so much less than that of the planet. This would have about the same effect as if one of the cells in your body started running around you. Please include a postal address, daytime telephone number and email address. BrowsOfSteel is correct, conservation of angular momentum requires it to happen, though on an imperceptibly small scale. That's what keeps everything on Earth "right-side up", even those in … The moon is moving further away from the earth due to tidal forces transferring angular momentum from the earth to moon, lengthening the earth day and increasing the orbital velocity of the moon. Press J to jump to the feed. So all humanity running together will have no more effect than a fly buzzing round a car has on the car’s balance and momentum. Once running, they only have to push against Earth with a much smaller force to overcome the friction of the air. If we fly to a destination located on the opposite side of the Earth and the direction of the flight is the same as that of the Earth’s rotation, we will not be able to reach our destination since the speed of the Earth is greater than that of the plane. They couldn't even do Hands Across America, and that just required standing. Typically all this air and water will be going in different directions at any one time, resulting in the forces cancelling each other out. Life found beneath Antarctic ice sheet 'shouldn't be there'. At an obliquity of 0 degrees, the two axes point in the same direction; i.e., the rotational axis is perpendicular to the orbital plane. If both the atmosphere and the Earth are moving at the same speed, then from the perspective of an airplane, they both might as well be still. The main sources are the Moon, Atmosphere and ocean. Two asteroids head straight for Earth from the same direction. The Earth and B are moving toward each other, which is the + direction for Earth as shown in this figure. Magazine issue report. When the Moon's tilt is in the same direction as the Earth's, it stays 5° closer to the Equator than the Sun, and when it's in the opposite direction, it reaches more extreme latitudes. Newton's third law. Perseverance Mars landing: Will NASA find life? Taking the numbers v_pe = 5 ms^-1, m_p = 4.5*10^11 kg, m_e = 5*10^24 kg, r = 6*10^6 m and T_s = 88400 s, the fraction by which the period of rotation of the earth changes is 2.6*10^-15. 3253 I'm no scientist, but I'm guessing that the earth will not rotate faster if we all run in the same direction. From here, the angular momentum of the earth is L_e=(2/5)*m_e*r^2*w_e where m_e is the mass of the earth and r is its radius. For example, there was an experiment that used two clocks set to the exact same time. A commercial flight flies at a speed of about half of this. Vote. I'm a mechanical engineer, and this has been discussed in my physics and dynamics courses before. Hence in terms of mass, the proportion of one cell to the body is comparable to that of all people to Earth – and the effect will be similar. For objects like the Earth, the force exerted by the Earth's mass pulls objects in the direction of the Earth's centre. All this jump day really did was burn a few calories. 100% Upvoted. At the centre of the earth is a huge ball of liquid iron. If everyone in the United States ran in the same direction, could we spin the earth enough for it to be summer in the U.S? The same principle applies to a single person. The earth is a very massive object with a circumference of … Even if there were 8 billion people with an average mass of 100 kg each, that would be a total of 800 million tonnes. Distance is a measure of the interval between two locations. You have about 30 trillion cells this says 37 trillion (ignoring bacteria). This is my back of envelope calculation. If everyone ran east, no. Of course. Yes, if everyone ran in one direction, it would affect the spin of the earth. Nevertheless I've come up with a preliminary definition that I think is rather good. Clockwise motion (abbreviated CW) proceeds in the same direction as a clock's hands: from the top to the right, then down and then to the left, and back up to the top. When the Moon is over a point farther from the equator, it has a lower "ground speed," so the lower end of the sine wave goes lower.