devrimci_kürt Posted December 18, 2009 Share Posted December 18, 2009 If all the people in the world started running to the East side of the Earth; would the Earth's rotational speed change? ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insane_alien Posted December 18, 2009 Share Posted December 18, 2009 yes but only very very slightly. probably immeasurably and definitely swamped by the moons influence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted December 18, 2009 Share Posted December 18, 2009 And the change would stop when the people did. I ran the numbers for this a while back — the rotation change is something like a part in 10^15. What you need is for all these people to get into a car and drive fast — increasing the mass by a factor of 10 or so and the speed by a factor of 100. I think that's on the edge of what you might be able to measure with atomic clocks and VLBI rotation measurements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainPanic Posted December 18, 2009 Share Posted December 18, 2009 If all the people in the world started running to the East side of the Earth; would the Earth's rotational speed change? ? It already changes when one ant walks in any direction. p.s. don't tell this to the ants. We'd better keep them ignorant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vordhosbn Posted December 18, 2009 Share Posted December 18, 2009 It already changes when one ant walks in any direction.p.s. don't tell this to the ants. We'd better keep them ignorant. The good thing, though, is that when one ant walks in one direction, another ant, somewhere, walks in the opposite. Thank, god for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.C.MacSwell Posted December 18, 2009 Share Posted December 18, 2009 And the change would stop when the people did. I ran the numbers for this a while back — the rotation change is something like a part in 10^15. What you need is for all these people to get into a car and drive fast — increasing the mass by a factor of 10 or so and the speed by a factor of 100. I think that's on the edge of what you might be able to measure with atomic clocks and VLBI rotation measurements. The trick is to have everone run to the nearest pole, North or South. Then, they can stop and admire their work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
npts2020 Posted December 20, 2009 Share Posted December 20, 2009 I wanna see those piles of humanity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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