World Jump Day Arrives

Posted on July 20, 2006

World Jump Day is an attempt to recruit 600,000,000 people to jump exactly at July 20th at 11:39:13 GMT. The site claims the mass jump will change the Earth's orbit and halt global warming -- but it won't. ABC News reports that Hans Peter Niesward, from the Department of Gravitationsphysik at the ISA in Munich, who created the theory is not even a real person.

Niesward's theory has at least one major flaw: Niesward doesn't really exist. He is a character created by Torsten Lauschmann, a German-born artist living in Scotland. Lauschmann, a live performer, filmmaker, DJ and photographer, may be best known for his work "Misshapen Pearl," described as a "phenomenological investigation of the streetlamp's function in our consumer society."
Lauschmann's multimedia approach has allowed him to explore a wide variety of subjects, including butterflies, paparazzi photos and, now, a flash-mob experiment.
In 2005, Lauschmann encouraged scientists and bloggers from around the world to discuss World Jump Day.
"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 idea has been totally discredited and a Wikipedia entry lists a few more reasons why this idea doesn't work and why it is a hoax. Mass jumps will not help us. However, it does give everyone an excuse to write a fun blog post about World Jump Day.