if everyone on the earth simultaneously started walking, then running in the same direction, would the earth?
364601
If that direction were opposite the direction of the \nearth's rotation, I think the answer is theoretically yes.\nIn reality there's not enough mass of people relative to the mass of the earth to have any effect.
135033
Probably won't work.  If you assume 10 billion people with an average weight of 150 lbs, the mass of the earth is about 10,000,000,000,000 (10^13) times greater.  If everyone jumped up and down, even on the same side of the Earth, it wouldn't affect the earth's momentum or motion in it's orbit.  The acceleration applied by the mass of people is just too small.  Think of it as being in the 13th decimal place(0.0000000000001), it's essentially unnoticeable.
443971
So far time dilation is possible in the forward direction. That is if YOU travel away from earth in a very fast spaceship near the speed of light then turn around and come back. The people on earth would age more then you have. YOUR clock would be different then those people on earth. It would be faster.\n\nGoing backward in time is still up there.\n\nThere are many experiments that prove this to be true. Atomic clocks capable of high accuracy are sync up. One is put on a plane and flown around the earth at high speeds for a long time. When the two clocks were compared later, they showed a difference, a very small difference but a difference none the less.\n\nTake a look at this website. There are plenty of other site out there.\n\nhttp://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/050225a.html\n\nInterestingly, if you did travel at the speed of light, you would be anywhere and everywhere all at once... WOW! That blows my mind.    :-)
532815
No we wouldn't age any less relative to everyone else on Earth becase we're all in what's called the same "reference frame." Relative to other reference frames, our aging rate would be different, but at the velocities involved the difference would be negligible.
435954
i'm assuming that you are ralking bout a hole being drilled right thru the earth and somebody falling into it...............you would accelerate and move towards the center and reach the opposite end of earth, at which point your velocity will reduce to zero and you will again move back to the cetre of earth and then onto the starting place.............in simple words you would execute Simple Harmonic Motion(SHM)
1169235
Yes. The tectonic plates that make up the earth move a few centimeters a year. No one denies that except for people who do not believe in earthquakes (or understand what they are). So over a long enough period of time the movement would move the continents. If you look at the shapes of the various continents they clearly fit together. Coincidence? Maybe. But rationally speaking it seems like the safe bet is Pangea really did exist. Not to mention the fossil records that support the theory.
1077909
They're already flying East.  That's why they can't stop.  Let's just say for the sake of argument that anything attached to the surface of the Earth stops instantly.  We do that and there are still interesting things to talk about.\n       Anything not attached in that case would go flying East.  But how fast it went would depend on how close it is to the equator or the poles.  If you were on the south pole or north pole, you would just stop slowly rotating.  If you were near one of the poles, you would fly east, but not so fast.  If you were in the continental U.S., you would go east somewhere around 600 - 700 mph depending on your latitude.  If you were at the equator, you would fly east at around 1000mph.
149668
Theoretically it is possible. There's a concept in physics, I think it's called "infinite velocity". If I understand it correctly it's something like terminal acceleration, where you are so far beyond the speed of light that you are truly everywhere at the same time. Is it literal? I have my doubts that God would choose to always be in such a state. Like it says in the Judeo-Christian tradition, He rested on the "seventh day".
60283
This question has been adequately answered, but it is a trick question in that every direction at the north pole is south (you can't walk east, west, or north of the north pole), and every direction at the south pole is north. You could, however take one step south, turn and walk east, but you would have to walk in a little circle to maintain your easterly direction. Weird, huh?
179346
Besides the intense heat and pressure, gravity would be the major force acting on you (say if we lived in a world with no air resistance.) As you would get closer to the center of the earth you speed would be increasing, but once you start pulling away from the center you speed would be slowing down due to gravity pulling on you from the opposite direction. At the opposite side of the earth you find yourself to come to a standstill for a brief second until you get pulled back inward toward the center and emerge on the same side of the earth in which you started. You would be stuck in this cycle going from either side of the earth until someone threw you a rope and are able to pull yourself to the surface.
609692
No. All motion is "Forward". Right down to the tiniest Particle. It can be pushed but not pulled. No matter the direction.
523001
It would change the Earth's rotation and the Earth would tilt on its axis. What if all of us asked the same question at the same time that violated one of  Yahoo's community guidelines? Would the system completely break down?
647859
Neglecting all factors, including air resistance, you would fall faster and faster until you passed the center going really fast, and "fall" up to the surface on the other side of the Earth, slower and slower, until you stopped at the surface on the other side. To someone standing there it would seem as if you had been been thrown up from deep in the hole just hard enough to reach the surface. The time it would take to go through the Earth this way would be the same as the time it would take to complete half an orbit around the world, or about 45 minutes.
730247
Yes, there is gravity at the center of the earth, but it would exert the same force in all directions at once, resulting in a net acceleration of zero.  Therefore, yes, you would float in the same manner as if you were in outer space.
1044221
I would think that you would spiral toward Australia and then back toward us with the mid point at the center of earth's mass, each time not going as far as before .  \n\nThe reason that you would basically oscillate like that, is that the force of gravity increases the closer the centers of mass are to each other (the closer you got to the center of the earth) and so you would be accelerating the entire way till you got there and you would continue going because there would be no force acting on you to decelerate you.  As you start going away from the center toward the land down under, the force of gravity would act against your current velocity, till they cancel each other out and you start to fall toward the center of the earth this time the other way.  The reason that you would not quite make it out the other side of the hole is wind resistance and other very small forces would be affecting you. \n\nAssuming I'm right, you would eventually end up rotating in 3-dimensions around your stomach (or where ever your center of mass is) at the center of the earth.
559137
1. If the Earth's rotation INSTANTLY stopped, everything not fixed to the Earth would continue to rotate around at the same velocity that they were before due to conservation of momentum. To us it would feel like a giant earthquake where the Earth would suddenly start "moving" in the opposite direction of the rotation. Buildings would collapse, the oceans would wash up onto land in large tidal waves, and there would be a large atmospheric wind shear at the surface. (The atmosphere is not attached to the planet either and would keep rotating too). Since we are traveling at about 460 m/s at the equator (about 1000 miles per hour) we would be tossed pretty far. (We wouldn't fly off the earth, though. Escape velocity is much higher.) As my officemate said when I told him about this question "We would be thrown into the wall at 1.5 times the speed of sound as the building was tipped off its foundation." \n\n2. Seismic waves from the impact would travel through the earth causing massive earthquakes. Depending on the size and velocity of the impactor, the earth might even break apart. \n\n3. Much of the atmosphere would be boiled off. A fireball would expand outward destroying material in it's path and polluting the rest of the atmosphere. \n\nThose things would probably kill all life and level everything on the Earth's surface! It would be much worse than the extinction event that may have contributed to dinosaur extinction. \n\nIf we were magically able to stop the Earth with no bad consequences, life on a non-rotating or retrograde (backwards) rotating planet would be very strange. \n\n* On a retrograde rotating planet, the sun and all the stars would rise in the west and set in the east. \n\n* If the rotation was very slow, the day could be very long. This would have a huge effect on plant and animal life on the earth, some of which could not survive many days with no sunlight. \n\nIf there are any physics enthusiasts out there, from knowledge of the mass of the earth, the radius of the earth, the earth's escape velocity (use as impactor velocity), the rotation period of the earth, and the average density of the earth you can calculate a very rough estimate of the size of an impactor needed to stop the earth's rotation. If I assume that the earth collides with an object just sitting in its orbit right at the edge at the equator I get a rough radius of 1600 km for the needed size. In reality, you would probably need something much, much bigger. There are not any objects of this size in the solar system that we don't know about, which means that this scenario can't really happen.
587307
Yes, you would be upside down.   You'd get lighter and lighter as you approached the centre of the Earth.   As you continued towards the opposite side, your weight would start increasing,you'd start to feel upside-down and you'd reach the other side feet-first.   If I tried this, I'd turn myself through 180 degrees when I reached the centre.   It would be a whole lot easier.