if someone was at the center of the earth, would they be weightless?

Answer 1

Yes, at the center of Earth, for all intensive purposes, you would be weightless.
I say for all intensive purposes since technically, "you", the person, posses mass and are exerting a force on yourself in toward your own center of mass, as well as the fact that you are still within the solar system/galaxy/universe and are still being attracted to other bodies. The Earth, however, would not be exerting any net gravitational force on you though.

You can imagine traveling to the center of the Earth (gravity wise) as peeling of layers in an onion. The deeper you go, the gravity of the layer of Earth you have above you cancels out. You are being pulled "up" by that layer the same as you are being pulled "down" the part of that same layer which is below you, leaving behind only the part of the Earth which you are still above which is gravitationally attracting you. When you get to the center, you have peeled off all the layers of the onion/Earth, and there is nothing left, all the forces of gravity cancel.

Answer 2

Assuming you were a point and you were at the center of mass of the earth (not necessarily the geometric center) there would be equal mass and distance induced gravitational force equal in all directions. This would constitute weightlessness.

Answer 3

An interesting thought!
Newtonian physics says, the force of gravity between any two bodies is directly proportional to the product of masses between the two bodies and inversely proportional to the suqare of the distance between their Centers (centers of gravity).

G = k X (m1 X m2) / (d^2), K=constant of proportionality

When you are at the center of the earth, the value of d becomes very low, say zero. Which means the denominator tends to become zero. This means the total value of the fraction tends to become Infinite! yes. your weight at the center of the earth is incredibly huge. Surprising but true.

Answer 4

Arun, The shell theorem referenced just above your answer predicts that the field inside a shell is zero, so the deeper you go, the less the effective mass of the earth, thereby canceling out the d^2 factor in the denominator. Ergo, answer is yes.

Surprising but truer......

Answer 5

i don't think anyone could ever be in the center, mainly cuz it's tooo hot .... and the earth isn' even so to get the exact amount of gravitational pull from each side would be very hard because some sides will pull more than other due to elevation on the surface.....


i dont know nothin, i like pretendin to b smart ...

Answer 6

You mean on the surface, or center inside the earth.

Answer 7

YES, they would be weightless, and charred to nothingness!

Answer 8

yes.acceleration due to gravity at the centre is zero as there is equal gravitational pull from all sides(Newton's shell theorem).

Answer 9

NO