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Hole in the Ground

July 24th, 2005

So I was wondering: If you were to dig a whole through the center of the earth and out the other end (presumably China), what would happen if you jumped in?

Post what you think :wink:

Posted by Mitchell in General, Musings | (Visited 834 times)

5 Comments »

  1. I think you’d get stuck at the earth’s core, because that’s where all the gravity is. Then again, the momentum of speed might pull you through onto the other side. Ooh, then you have to factor in the speed and friction of the air, kind of like a space shuttle re-entering the atmosphere. My conclusion: you’d burn up. :)

    Comment by Bryan — 7/25/05 @ 2:32 am

  2. hypothetically speaking you would be stuck in simple harmonic motion between the united states and china… that is if this were to occur in a perfect vacuum with no friction…

    Comment by chang — 7/25/05 @ 9:41 pm

  3. you’d be screw-ed

    Comment by Tim — 7/26/05 @ 1:40 pm

  4. i’ve thought about this many times, and had nightmares as a child about it (except there was water and crocodiles at the center of the planet…). Basically, assuming this hole is just a straight shot through the planet with air in it, and getting around that molten core thing and popping up in an ocean…you would fall initially until you reached a terminal velocity (just as you would skydiving) from the air friction. You would continue to fall, but the amount of gravity pulling you down would be lessening, since you would be nearing the center of mass of earth. I’m not sure how this would work with the speeds since you’ll have less force on you, but you were traveling a constant speed…but is the air density thicker so you slow down???

    Eventually you will reach the center of the planet and i believe shoot by at quite some speed and begin to slow down and reverse course. You would be trapped in this degredating oscillation until you came to rest at the core of the planet, where you would be weightless (not like in orbit where you are merely in free-fall, but actually having no net force on you)

    enjoy your stay, because now you are trapped forever at the bottom of thousands of miles of climbing (possibly with crocodiles). enter the nightmare.

    Comment by dormeier — 7/30/05 @ 10:04 am

  5. YOUR DAD ASKED US THIS SAME QUESTION IN CHINESE SCHOOL WHEN HE TAUGHT US!

    Comment by Sheau-Yan — 9/3/05 @ 11:22 am

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