Jump to prevent global warming
(abcnews)
Updated: 2006-07-21 15:11
"He thought it would just circulate among friends, but it quickly seemed
to morph. Within weeks it was global - people in Australia were talking about it on
the radio," said Neil Mulholland, a reader in contemporary art theory at
Edinburgh College of Art. "The more it was discussed, the more people joined the
site, and it crashed several times."
The site now claims to have just under 600 million jumpers registered for the
cause. But will people jump out of environmental activism or a commitment to the
bizarre? Is the jump as important as the buzz it's created?
The Anti-Jumpers
Members of the online environmental site treehugger.com have been debating
not only the physical possibility of the jump's promise but the morality of its
outcome.
Some believe it's risky to alter Earth's orbit, while
others fear the jump will make the Gregorian calendar obsolete because of the
length of Earth's new orbit. Others doubt the ability of the world's population
to synchronize an event like this.
The folks at madphysics.com have constructed an anti-World Jump
Day manifesto, complete with equations drawn up to dispute the validity
of Niesward's — or Lauschmann's - theories.
Supposedly based on "seismographic recordings ranging from impacts of comets
to the simultaneous movement of the audience at the 2002 World Cup Final," the
site uses graphs, bell curves and diagrams to support its hypothesis and directs
the user to several prestigious science and environmental sites, none of which
mention World Jump Day or support any of its assertions.
One word of caution: The site tells those of us living in the eastern part of
the United States to jump at 6:39:13 because we are five hours behind GMT, but
that is not true in July. Because of daylight savings time, Lauschmann has a
part of the United States jumping an hour early.
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