600 Million People
World Jump Day is coming to a place near you "Real Soon Now" (tm)
No seriously, the folks at World Jump Day have calculated that if 600 million people all jump at the same time - we can slightly shift the planetary orbit of Earth.
Scientists from the ISA/Munchen (Germany) have produced a report ... which confirms that planet Earth could be driven out of its current orbital rotation by the combined force of human beings.Why bother? Well according to these guys a succesful "jump" could save the planet by reducing global warming to a minimum.Prof. Hans Niesward and his colleagues at the Department of Graviationphysik estimated that it would take a minimum of 600 Miliion people on the western hemisphere to jump at the same moment.
It sounds like a bunch of scientists warming up their theories in public - without concern for the consequences.
It also reminds me of those old Cold War "science paranoia" movies - like The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) - where scientists explode atomic bombs and tilt the Earth into a new orbit that causes - you guessed it - global warming on a massive scale.
Or maybe Crack In the Earth (1965) - where a scientist attempts to develop eco-friendly geothermal energy - by dropping an atomic bomb deep into the Earth's crust.
I think you get the point - strange science like this might well make the problem worse - rather than better.
I console myself that if we get it wrong we can always try and correct it by having another "World Jump Day".
But it could be another hundred years before the Earth is in the correct position for a "succesful" jump attempt again - so if the scientists have their figures,or their theories, totally wrong - it will be getting hotter for a long time yet.
Tags: science, apocalypse, movies, world jump day, global warming, paranoia