Blue Collar Scientist

Archimedes is known for having said “Give me a lever long enough, and I will move the Earth.”

Pamela Gay, the author of Star Stryder, works out just how big a lever you’d actually need to move the Earth. The starting assumptions are laid out and all the math is laid out in plain sight, and she provides the first answer that I know of to this roughly 2,200 year old question.

And the answer might shock you. You’d need a lever 4.3 billion light years long.

Holy crap.

Go over and give it a read - it’s made to order for any real geek.

Tags: Archimedes, Earth, lever, Pamela Gay, Star Stryder

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 10:14 am and is filed under astronomy, education and public outreach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.