If there was a hole all the way through the earth and you fell in, What would happen when you got halfway down

Question

Forget the hot core thing, this is theoretical.

Answer 1

This is a fairly simple mathmatical calculation.
The momentum from your fall would propel you
back up the opposite hole until you almost, but not
quite, reached the surface.

You would then repeat this back the other way and
oscillate back and forth, ever getting further from the
surface when you peaked. Eventually you'd settle into
the center where you would remain weightless for
eternity or until someone with a long rope came along.

Answer 2

If you're talking about a theoretical situation with no atmosphere, no hot core, no coriolis effect due to the Earth's rotation, etc.:

You'll accelerate all the way down to the center of the Earth (in other words, your speed keeps increasing). Once you reach the center of the Earth, you'll be at your maximum speed. Momentum will carry you past the center of the Earth. Once past the center of the Earth, you'll start slowing down at the same rate you sped up.

Result: you'll just barely reach the surface on the opposite side, then fall back down and back up, just barely reaching the surface you started on, then back down, etc. You'll oscillate from one side of the Earth to the other forever.

It would take you about 42 minutes to reach the other side (42 minutes, 20 seconds, if you want to be more exact). Read paragraph four of some notes on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books if you wonder about the significance of this number (42 is used over and over throughout the Alice books).

Answer 3

First of all, there would come a point where you would no longer be able to breathe due to the increasing air pressure preventing you from be able to inflate your lungs. Then you would hit the point where the pressure got so large that it started to crush bones and guarantee you are dead if the lack of oxygen didn't do that already. Finally, you would fall through the gravitational center of the planet and begin falling "up" from the center, only to be drawn back in again. This would continue sorta like the height of a bouncing ball decreases until you were left a small ball of organic matter at the center of the Earth.

Answer 4

A hole, and the lava is not pouring in to close it? Ok, let us forget the heat, then one just oscillates to and fro---say from San Fransisco to New Delhi without a ticket, but the amplitude gradually diminishes due to air resistance---or do I forget air too??---and then finally one settles down well and truly at the core, the very core. Now do not ask me how he comes out!

Answer 5

Forgetting about all the other things..
You would probably just fall through the center and
up the other side a bit and then back to the center and
just kind of float there in the center of the hole...

Answer 6

Umm, you wouldn't GET half way down. You'd immediately incinerate from the intense heat of magma, and then plasma in the inner core of the planets, as well as electrical stresses. Remember, the Earth isn't a hollow ball. There's lava and plasma in that thar' thing!

Answer 7

You will not stop at the core... Assuming no fiction you will go right past the core and reach the other side of the globe. This is because of Inertia.

Answer 8

Your momentum would carry you past the 1/2 way point, but not up to the side on the other side, then oscilate back and forth until you end up in the middle somewhere.

Answer 9

when u reach halfway...u'd wish u hadn't fallen in.. :) haha

if u mean if there was a hole in and out of the earth, theory says that u would fall up and down one end to the other..

Answer 10

you will stop falling down when you reach the center of the earth. you will just like be floating out there...

gravity is pulling you from all sides when you reach the earth's center that is why you will stop there.