People are jumping all the time in their day-to-day lives. Well, not really all the time, but we can safely assume that most people jump at least once per day. Whether it is while jumping out of bed, going up set of stairs, jumping over puddle of mud or just jumping up and down out of pure happiness or craziness.
So principally, we can already (partly) answer question from beginning of this article.
How come?
Well, because if most people jump at least once per day during their (awake) life then we probably have millions of simultaneous jumps this exact second.
And what is happening to Earth? Nothing.
Nonetheless, let’s play more with numbers and explore this question more deeply.
Numbers, numbers and impact to Earth
First, let’s see how many people are awake right now.
Currently while you’re reading this article, there are probably more than 40% of people awake. Let’s say it is 50%. Based on that, and by number of people alive on Earth (8,014,190,813) we can calculate that 4,007,095,406 people are awake currently.
Now that’s a significant number.
Let’s assume that 10% of people cannot jump because they are either babies, old people, or people with disabilities.
That leads us to 3,606,385,865 who are awake currently and with the ability to jump.
Then, as proposed at the beginning of this article, let’s assume that everybody jumps at least once day. During awake hours of course. We hope that people are not jumping while asleep 🙂
If we have around 16 awake hours during day, that calculates to 57,600 seconds. Based on that, and doing some simple math in the background, we can state that perhaps 17,000 000 (seventeen million) people jump at the same time every day on Earth.
That’s a big number. And a lot of weight for planet. If we go with an average weight per person of 60 kg (132 pounds) then all of those people have weight of 1,020,000,000 kilograms (224,871,507,004 pounds) 1,020,000 tonnes.
Over one million tonnes!
And nothing is happening to the Earth. As Expected.
Ok, so far so good.
But what if everyone jumped at the same time? All people, currently alive. Would that shake our planet? Tilt it just slightly to lose its balance?
Well let’s see.
First – did this experiment already happen in real life? Well, not really – except for the number of people who accidentally jump every day simultaneously at the same time, as described in previous passages.
Mass of Humans vs Mass of Earth
So to hypothetically try to explain what would happen, we need to take into consideration two most important things and those are:
- Mass (or weight) of Earth
- Mass (or weight) of all Humans on Earth
Note: Mass and Weight are two different things in physics but in everyday life they could be considered the same. To put it bluntly - your mass is the same no matter where you go in the universe; your weight, on the other hand, differs from place to place.
Mass of Earth is 5.972 × 10^24 kg.
That calculates to 13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds (or 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms) Now that’s a lot. Really a lot.
But what about all humans on Earth? Can we even compare?
Let’s see.
Average weight of (adult) human is 62kg. As we all know, babies and teenagers (in most cases) weigh less than adults. But also, there are less babies and teenagers than adults in the world. Thus, we could conclude that the average weight of all humans currently alive is around 55kg.
Note: Table below shows average weight in different regions on our planet. Observe the difference in average weight in Asia versus North America. Astonishing differences.
| Region | Adult population (millions) | Average weight |
| Africa | 535 | 60.7 kg (133.8 lb) |
| Asia | 2,815 | 57.7 kg (127.2 lb) |
| Europe | 606 | 70.8 kg (156.1 lb) |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | 386 | 67.9 kg (149.7 lb) |
| North America | 263 | 80.7 kg (177.9 lb) |
| Oceania | 24 | 74.1 kg (163.4 lb) |
| World | 4,630 | 62.0 kg (136.7 lb) |
Ok, so with that number (average weight), we can easily calculate weight or mass of all humans on Earth.
So we take number of humans (8,014,190,813) and multiply it with 55 and we get 440,780,494,715.
Ok, so far so good – mass of all humans on Earth is 440,780,494,715kg. That is 440 billion and 780 million kilograms or 971 billion and 990 million pounds.
Compared to Earth’s mass of 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms, that’s really nothing. We’re basically like a needle in the haystack.
But how small are we in percentages?
0.000000000007378314273769668563776364%
Yes, you read that right – “seven septillion three hundred seventy-eight sextillion three hundred fourteen quintillion two hundred seventy-three quadrillion seven hundred sixty-nine trillion six hundred sixty-eight billion five hundred sixty-three million seven hundred seventy-six thousand three hundred sixty-four undecillionths.”
That is how small we are compared to Earth.
In theory, the combined force exerted by everyone jumping would be completely dwarfed by the gravitational pull that the Earth exerts on each individual..
Consequently, any force generated by the collective jump would be minuscule compared to the planet’s gravitational force.
So without further ado – let’s finely and completely answer the question from the beginning.
Conclusion
What if everyone on Earth jumped at once? What would really happen?
If everyone on Earth were to jump at the same time, the collective force generated would be inconsequential compared to the planet’s mass. Earth’s gravitational force on individuals is much stronger than any force generated by a simultaneous jump. The event would not have any noticeable impact on the Earth’s position or structure.
Our mass is so small compared to the mass of Earth that there would be no impact whatsoever.
Yes, sure if aliens would be looking from above they would think that we’re completely crazy.
“Look at those crazy little ants, jumping at the same time without no reason. What are they trying to achieve?” – Alien1 shouted to Alien2 who is alpha male and can’t stand humans.
Joking aside, this question has been asked for years and years because it sounds interesting and on first thought you could think that it would have some impact on Earth.
Nonetheless when you introduce some simple math you see how small we really are. Compared to our planet, that is.
Note: If you’re interested in similar articles, on topic of “What would happen if”, you can check:
- What would happen if Moon disappeared?
- What would happen if we stopped fishing?
- What would happen if water disappeared on Earth?
- What would happen if lying never existed?
- What would happen if gravity suddenly disappeared?
- What would happen if everyone stopped having children?
- What would happen if mosquitoes went extinct?
- What would happen if ants went extinct?
- …and many more.
