Can runners increase the spin of the earth?

Question

If everyone living on earth between longitude 0-180 degrees started running east as fast as they could, could we speed up the spin of the earth? And if they could, what would happen if they all stopped running at the same time? Would we get whiplash?

Answer 1

A lot of people would get very wet.

If you run East on the East Coast, you run out into the Atlantic

Ocean...Similar situations exist along major rivers...

You might want everyone to get down on their knees and push

mountains eastward and see what happens.

In short, the human population on Earth is just the teeniest miniscule fraction of a percent of the total mass of the Earth and therefore would have no effect at all on the rotation of the Earth.

Answer 2

Angular momentum is conserved.

The momentum of [Earth + idle people] is a fixed value.

If people all begin running in the same direction (let's say east), then their personal angular momentum (relative to Earth's orbit) has increased.  Since the total angular momentum must stay the same, then Earth's must decrease.

By how much?

The mass of Earth is around 6x10^24 kg

The mass of 6 billion people (put them at 100 kg each, which is a gross exaggeration -- yest there is a pun there), is at most 6x10^11 kg.

As a first approximation, the ratio is 10^13.  

If we could keep this up for a million years, the difference might become measurable (but we'd have to dig it out from the much larger slowing down caused by the Moon).

Answer 3

ya they cab

Answer 4

i don't think so

Answer 5

This is another question that needs to be checked before it is posted, since it's asked repeatedly.

Even IF mankind represented more than a tiny tiny fraction of the mass of the earth, and even IF you could get an appreciable percentage doing what you suggest, it wouldn't do anything, since every bit of energy pushed into the ground would be pushed the OPPOSITE way into the atmosphere, which would counteract the forces involved.

In other words, wouldn;t do a thing.

  

Answer 6

Raymond shows you how foolish this is – the Earth is at least 10 trillion times the weight of the human race put together.

When some other fool asked whether by 6 billion people jumping at the same time would the Earth move, I likened it to a bunch of fleas jumping on Everest and moving the mountain.  

The problem arises as people today have less idea of the size of the Earth than people did in the Middle Ages.  

You need to get out more – see the wide open spaces.

Answer 7

Easy answer, NO.

Earth just spin all by itself due to gravity. If there’s over 1 billion people running in this world then the world will still spin by its normal speed. But the earth is spinning fast already. Do you still want to make it faster? Then we’ll all fall down into outer space! If there’s no gravity that is. Because if it does, we will feel a very warm air (due to spinning fast and hot air are produced) and people may die.

Edit: What?? What do you all people need to ask, see and learn? It’s true and it’s over totally true! So you people believe false huh? SO ALL OF YOU THINKS THAT SPINNERS CAN MAKE THE WORLD SPIN FASTER AND FASTER? What the heck! It’s not-so-true! Make a research of your own, it takes me about 30 minutes to answer this question!

Mae

Answer 8

No, it wouldnt do a thing. Put it like this, only about 5 percent of the world's oceans and seas have been explored by man. So imagine how many humans would have to exist for anything like that to come close to happening. Great question though.

Answer 9

hahaha i dont think that how it works, but it would be fun to try...

Answer 10

Yes.

A runner could but not measurably. As soon as he stopped the force would be applied in the opposite direction and cancel out.

Answer 11

No, people make up an infantecimally small amount of the mass of the Earth.  It wouldn't even be close.  I like the way you think though.

Answer 12

ummm u may try, its seems like a good idea if a lot of pplz walk for spinning the earth but its also a little dumb tho in a sence pplz dont care about world's spinning..lol.

Answer 13

Mass of earth = 6 x 10^24 kg

Mass of humans = 6 x 10^11 (actually a bit less)

Ratio: 10^13 to 1

Speed of earth = 1000 kph

Speed of humans = 10 kph

Ratio: 100 to 1

Total effect: 10^15 to  1, or about 0.1 nanoseconds per day

This running thing would speed up the spin by about 0.1 nanoseconds per day.  Stopping would slow it back down by the same amount.  Since the Earth's spin rate changes by about 3000 nanoseconds up or down every day (some days more, some days less),  I don't think 0.1 nanoseconds is going to be noticed by anybody.

Answer 14

idk but that would be hecka cool! if you ever try, i'm down!!

Answer 15

can any of those runners run faster than 600 mph?

I'm thinking maybe if we all just laid down, pulled down some of the tall buildings that are giving us some drag, we might end up like the octupus ride at the carnival.  

Answer 16

In fact yes, and it's proved.

Oil tankers are so large indeed that when they move they alter, with a slight degree of perceptability, the earth's spin.

I'd hazard a guess that those living where you ask outweigh any given oil tanker by orders of magnitudes.

But I wouldn't count on whiplash. You can't feel oil tankers moving at all and need lazers to detect any vector change at all.

I have in fact proposed the effect you note though to slow down trains for emergency stops.

If you take the rear 'half' of the train to be "panic stopped", disconnect it from the front, but use the inertia difference of the train to the earth via a cable through an anchored and pulleyed arresting gear, then the back part would slow down, stop and be forced backwards by the cables into a reverse direction. And the front would just stop from the drag induced by reversing the direction of the rear section through said pulleyed arresting gear... The momentum would thus be transfered to the Earth.

I thought as you understood the oil tanker wobbles so well as to predict them, then you would understand this better than our fearless leaders ~ who have rejected my proposal outright.

I know my plan would not work for large trains as they weigh so much the cables would surely break (without very good engineering anyway). But I think it might be doable on a specially designed passenger train ~ saving "gas" as it were, by increasing the use of rails through increased safety Etc.