If you dig a hole to the other side of earth (and other myths)

[masterrawad]

let's say you dig a hole straight down. once you reach the other side you decide to jump down the hole. how will it feel falling to the other side? will you start to fall the other way?

 

[TankAss95]

let's say you dig a hole straight down. once you reach the other side you decide to jump down the hole. how will it feel falling to the other side? will you start to fall the other way?

If you made some sort of generator to change the unlimited kinetic energy, from like you are suggesting, into potential energy, isn't that unlimited, free energy?

Okay let's say that, like you are saying, dug a straight tunnel down the diameter of the earth. Like you are saying if you threw, let's just say a ball down there, imagine if you got unlimited kinetic energy. Lol.

 

[Beeblebrox237]

Assuming you dig straight through the center of the earth and don't get melted, crushed, or have your tunnel destroyed by movement in the mantle and outer core, then your acceleration would lessen as you approached the center of the earth. Acceleration would be 0 at the center, so eventually you would end up there, like a pendulum swinging back and forth always slows down and ends up closest to the center of the earth.

 

[TankAss95]

Assuming you dig straight through the center of the earth and don't get melted, crushed, or have your tunnel destroyed by movement in the mantle and outer core, then your acceleration would lessen as you approached the center of the earth. Acceleration would be 0 at the center, so eventually you would end up there, like a pendulum swinging back and forth always slows down and ends up closest to the center of the earth.

 

[Villain]

Assuming you dig straight through the center of the earth and don't get melted, crushed, or have your tunnel destroyed by movement in the mantle and outer core, then your acceleration would lessen as you approached the center of the earth. Acceleration would be 0 at the center, so eventually you would end up there, like a pendulum swinging back and forth always slows down and ends up closest to the center of the earth.

Acceleration would stop even sooner than that thanks to terminal velocity (thank you friction).

Theoretically, if it were a sealed vacuum tube and you were in some crazy pressure-safe suit then you'd make it out the other end and then go right back the way you came (Laws of Momentum and Inertia FTW).

 

[wfooshee]

let's say you dig a hole straight down. once you reach the other side you decide to jump down the hole. how will it feel falling to the other side? will you start to fall the other way?

Do you have an intelligent potato battery for company?

 

[Camaroyenko]

It's technically impossible, you WOULD be melted halfway though.

 

[Crumpet]

Why is the earth so hot in the middle?

I thought it was just soil, which contains worms, which are awesome..

 

[TB]

Off topicness removed. Stay on topic, thanks.

 

[TankAss95]

Why is the earth so hot in the middle?

I thought it was just soil, which contains worms, which are awesome..

The earth is so hot in the middle because there is volcanoes I suppose lol.

Scientists study the insides of the earth by running electric currents through one side to the other (I think). They say that on the outside of the earth is the crust (where we and worms live), then the mantle, then the outer and finally inner core. Many people believe that there is a massive crystal at the centre of the earth, due to the intense pressure.

Off topicness removed. Stay on topic, thanks.

Apologies.

 

[Crumpet]

The earth is so hot in the middle because there is volcanoes I suppose lol.

Scientists study the insides of the earth by running electric currents through one side to the other (I think). They say that on the outside of the earth is the crust (where we and worms live), then the mantle, then the outer and finally inner core. Many people believe that there is a massive crystal at the centre of the earth, due to the intense pressure.

A massive crystal? I shall find it!

So the earth is kind of split into levels? With a different kind of thing as you go further down? We don't learn this in school

 

[rocko100]

Yeah, like onions, only with fire, dirt, lava annnnd...

WORMS!

 

[Danoff]

You's slide along one side of the hole the entire way down due to the motion of the earth and then get trapped in the center.

 

[TankAss95]

A massive crystal? I shall find it!

So the earth is kind of split into levels? With a different kind of thing as you go further down? We don't learn this in school

Yeah. You'll hopefully learn it in geography. The crust is rock and soil and stuff and then the mantle is some sort of goey hot lava. I can't remember stuff about the core, though.
Anyway I better stop myself from going off topic again.

 

[Danoff]

...oh, and I'm pretty sure you'd get crushed by the atmospheric pressure above you before you got anywhere near the center. Our atmosphere is a very thin layer on top of the crust. You'd be creating a column of air much much much much taller than you're used to and then jumping into it.

There's also probably an air density issue here that I'm going to have to think about.

Edit:

Also I'm assuming this:

Assuming you dig straight through the center of the earth and don't get melted, crushed, or have your tunnel destroyed by movement in the mantle and outer core

Because otherwise this is just silly.


Edit 2:

Ok, after thinking about this for 5 seconds, I think you'd have a pool of water in the center of your tunnel since the water in the air would condense with the pressure and get trapped in the center.

 

[TankAss95]

...oh, and I'm pretty sure you'd get crushed by the atmospheric pressure above you before you got anywhere near the center. Our atmosphere is a very thin layer on top of the crust. You'd be creating a column of air much much much much taller than you're used to and then jumping into it.

There's also probably an air density issue here that I'm going to have to think about.

Edit:

Also I'm assuming this:

Because otherwise this is just silly.

Edit 2:

Ok, after thinking about this for 5 seconds, I think you'd have a pool of water in the center of your tunnel since the water in the air would condense with the pressure and get trapped in the center.

Troll physics denied.
Quite an impressive mental exercise dare I say, though.

 

[terminator363]

Assuming you dig straight through the center of the earth and don't get melted, crushed, or have your tunnel destroyed by movement in the mantle and outer core, then your acceleration would lessen as you approached the center of the earth. Acceleration would be 0 at the center, so eventually you would end up there, like a pendulum swinging back and forth always slows down and ends up closest to the center of the earth.

That was my identical thought! 👍

Excluding all variables the only way to get through is an elevator like pod. Once reaching the middle you'd lose gravity then regain it in the opposite direction (I hope that made sense).

 

[Techy]

The earth is so hot in the middle because there is volcanoes I suppose lol.

Scientists study the insides of the earth by running electric currents through one side to the other (I think). They say that on the outside of the earth is the crust (where we and worms live), then the mantle, then the outer and finally inner core. Many people believe that there is a massive crystal at the centre of the earth, due to the intense pressure.

Isn't the massive crystal composed of mostly iron and nickel, and other dense metals?

Also here's a quote I quoted out of Wikipedia about this:

On August 30, 2011, Professor Kei Hirose, professor of high-pressure mineral physics and petrology at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, became the first person to recreate conditions found at the earth's core under laboratory conditions, subjecting a sample of iron nickel alloy to the same type of pressure by gripping it in a vice between 2 diamond tips, and then heating the sample to approximately 4000 Kelvins with a laser. The sample was observed with x-rays, and strongly supported the theory that the earth's inner core was made of giant crystals running north to south.

 

[TankAss95]

Isn't the massive crystal composed of mostly iron and nickel, and other dense metals?

Also here's a quote I quoted out of Wikipedia about this:

Thanks for presenting this.
I feel kind of like a retard by bringing this up but I remember reading somewhere that you could recreate the pressure of the core of the earth by squeezing two diamond-tips together. Isn't that what they basically did in this experiment?

 

[Techy]

Thanks for presenting this.
I feel kind of like a retard by bringing this up but I remember reading somewhere that you could recreate the pressure of the core of the earth by squeezing two diamond-tips together. Isn't that what they basically did in this experiment?

You could try researching about diamond's properties. My conjectures will probably be false anyways.

 

[TankAss95]

You could try researching about diamond's properties. My conjectures will probably be false anyways.

To be quite honest I'm researching many things right now to be able to argue in the God thread. I'm researching evolution, the Bible, the Big bang theory, progress through modern science, a little philosophy etc.

I don't have time!

I do find the study of the interior of the earth interesting though. I remember I lightly studied it during geography class.

 

[Techy]

To be quite honest I'm researching many things right now to be able to argue in the God thread. I'm researching evolution, the Bible, the Big bang theory, progress through modern science, a little philosophy etc.

I don't have time!

I do find the study of the interior of the earth interesting though. I remember I lightly studied it during geography class.

I have light studies on science, most notably on Physics so I could research a bit more on Diamond and its properties.

 

[TankAss95]

I have light studies on science, most notably on Physics so I could research a bit more on Diamond and its properties.

👍
And I found this:
"Structure of the Interior

Accumulated and detailed seismic studies, coupled with theoretical speculation, suggests the interior structure shown schematically on the left (the figure is not to scale). The Earth is believed to have a solid inner core, made mostly of iron and nickel. This is surrounded by a liquid outer core, also mostly iron and nickel. The diameter of the core is estimated to be 7000 km, compared with a 12,700 km diameter for the entire planet. The crust is only a few tens of kilometers thick. The region between the core and the crust is called the mantle. The upper part of the mantle and the crust together are called the lithosphere. Sitting just below the lithosphere is a region of plastic consistency called the aesthenosphere. We shall have more to say about the lithosphere and aesthenosphere shortly."

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/earth/interior.html

 

[wfooshee]

Troll physics denied.
Quite an impressive mental exercise dare I say, though.

Atmospheric pressure at the Earth's surface is about 15 pounds per square inch. The air is about 100 miles thick, give or take. So that 100 miles of air above that square inch weighs 15 pounds.

Whaddya ya think a square-inch-cross-section column of air 4000 miles high would weigh? Who knows?

Now my own thought experiment finds that the maximum pressure would not be at the center, but at 2 points along your tunnel equidistant from the center, but at what distance I couldn't tell you. I say not at the center because you have no mass "under" you there, gravity is equal in all directions outwards. So somewhere along that tunnel through the earth, you have enough mass above you to start opposing the mass below you. At some depth you'd actually have pressure from above and pressure from below, resulting in a higher pressure than either direction alone.

Now wherever that point is along the tunnel, I would guess (and it's purely a WAG for sure) that the pressure would be enough to condense the water out of the air, perhaps even freeze it despite the temperature and plug your hole.

Assuming, of course, that you could shore up your tunnel well enough to keep it open against the weight of all that rock, magma, nickel, and iron in the first place.

So would your intelligent potato battery be boiled by the temperature, or mashed by the pressure?

 

[PeterJB]

When you reach the center you would get ripped into many pieces and stuck to the sides of the tunnel. Gravity pulls everything to the center of the earth, if the center is no longer there, then the walls of the tunnel would pull you in all directions, assuming the earth doesn't collapse in on itself before then.

 

[niky]

Half of Earth pulling you one way and the other half pulling the other way would be half-a-gee pulling you in every direction... well... less... maybe an eigth or a tenth... or...

If the tube is filled with air and uninsulated, you would probably stay in the center of the tube, or the drift due to rotation would be slight enough so that you could correct... but you'd probably die from the heat long before reaching the core. If the tube is filled with air and insulated, you could probably survive long enough to die from the pressure... given a pressurized armored suit, you'd still go splat when you hit the condensed water at the center of the Earth...

If the tube is an insulated vacuum tube, and you're in an airtight suit, you will likely slide down one side of the tube as the Earth rotates while you're going down. If it's slippery enough, you could probably slide back up a ways before falling back down.

We'd want the tube to be lined with magnets, and your suit or capsule covered in magnets to repulse the walls. That way, you could orbit the Earth from the inside in a straight line, up and down...

 

[wfooshee]

Run the tube from pole to pole so it's on the rotational axis.

 

[Jimlaad43]

The Earth is so hot in the middle because it is full of radioactive elements like Uranium.
That means that getting to the middle would leave you destroyed by radiation.

 

[Danoff]

Run the tube from pole to pole so it's on the rotational axis.

Clever.

Pole to Pole would generally solve the earth's rotation problem. 👍

There is no issue with being split apart at the center of the earth since gravity acts on all parts of you equally (for the purposes of this thread anyway). It would not act suddenly on one part of you more than the rest, and so it would not rip at you or crush you.

The gravity equilibrium point is definitely at the center where all forces balance out, so I don't see anything getting concentrated at points along the tube. There are some serious fluid dynamics issues to contend with though as air gets very heavy very quickly and carries water in it.

So the tube needs to be vacuum sealed and drilled from pole to pole. You need a pressure suit that can survive a vacuum. The tube needs to be able to keep the magma/radiation/weight of the world out and structurally sound enough to resist any force from magma currents as it flows around the tube. You'd also want to avoid metal in your pressure suit so that you wouldn't get hosed by earth's magnetics. With all of that, you might be able to do the freefall from one side of the earth to the other that we all really want to do.

 

[Stevisiov]

It would be a remarkably quick way to travel, given pole to pole would take only 40 minutes or so. While this is a ridiculous suggestion, its not such a bad idea on somewhere like the moon. While still beyond our current capabilities, its a great deal easier than on earth.

The moon has a solid and stable core, and already comes with a vacuum fitted as standard! There is less rock, and less gravity, the pressures involved are far less extreme.

That said, despite the shorter distance, 'fall' through the moon would actually take longer due to the lower gravity, making the journey close to an hour in length. Still very fast!