this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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xkcd

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For decades I've been working off the accumulated rotation from one long afternoon on a merry-go-round when I was eight.

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[–] Aceticon 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The mass of the Earth is 5.972 × 10^24^, so you would need 5.972 × 10^20^ humans of 100 Kg each all turning in the same direction to make the Earth rotate 1% the other way (so about 597,200,000 trillion humans).

PS: I might be slightly wrong here as rotations have to do with angular momentum which is a bit more complicated than the linear kind because rotational inertia doesn't depende on mass alone, but the law of conservation of angular momentum does apply.