Hans Peter Niesward, from the Department of Gravitationsphysik at the ISA in Munich, says we can stop global warming in one big jump.

The slightly disheveled professor states his case on WorldJumpDay.org, an Internet site created to recruit 600,000,000 volunteers to jump simultaneously¹ on July 20 at 11:39:13 GMT in an effort to shift Earth's position.

Niesward claims that on this day "Earth occupies one of the most fragile positions in its orbits for the last 100 years." According to the site, the shift in orbit will make the Earth a little further way from the sun and "stop global warming, extend daytime hours and create a more homogeneous climate."

However, Niesward doesn't really exist. He is a character created by Torsten Lauschmann, a German-born artist living in Scotland. Niesward is Lauschmann himself or an actor.

Lauschmann's multimedia² approach has allowed him to explore a wide variety of subjects, including butterflies, paparazzi photos and, now, a flash-mob experiment.

"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."

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 savings³ time , Lauschmann has a part of the United States jumping an hour early.