is it possible?

Question

if it was possible to drill a hole through the world, would you fall out the other end

Answer 1

Sure, why not..

Answer 2

Well, I'm sure it's possible. Just incredibly difficult and probably not possible with current technology.

Basically, some of the problems facing you as you drill through the earth are these:

1. As you get lower down, the pressure/weight of the atmosphere above you will increase. Like diving down into the ocean, there's a limit to how far you can go before you get squished.

2. Also as you go lower down, the Earth gets hotter due to the heat of the core. This heat will become so great that, eventually, you'll reach molten rock. At that point you'll have to stop drilling for a while and start sucking out the molten rock and spraying it into space or something. After doing that, you'll be left with this huge cavern at the centre of the earth (assuming it doesn't collapse under the weight of the rock outside.

3. The force of gravity will DECREASE as you get closer to the middle - not increase as someone suggested. When you reach the centre of the earth, you'll actually be completely weightless because the mass of the earth is surrounding you, with gravity pulling in all directions equally, rather than the earth being underneath you, all pulling you down. This means that while you'll be falling into the centre, once you reach the centre you have to start CLIMBING as you continue to drill through.

4. Finally, when you reach the other side, you'll have a completely unihabitable earth due to the amount of damage you've probably done to it to get that far.

On the plus side, you've got a great fairground ride when you've finished. Assuming you've drilled a perfectly straight hole through the middle of the earth, you could jump into it and you'd fall and fall and fall until you reached the centre, and then your momentum/inertia would keep you moving forward and upwards to the surface again even though the force of gravity would then be pulling you backwards. Assuming no friction, your head would just pop out the hole at the other end before you start plummeting back down to the centre again. Back and forth you'd go like a great bobbing pendulum. It'd be great!

Answer 3

Ignoring all the impossibilities of such a venture, and concentrating on the physics of the forces:

Assuming you start at rest on this side of the hole, gravity will keep accelerating you until you reach the centre. As you get closer and closer to the centre the force of gravity will get smaller and smaller, due to there being closer and closer to half the mass of the earth on either side of you. Once past the centre you would start decelerating, as there would now be more mass behind you than in front of you. You would then keep slowing down until you reach the other end of the hole, where you will have decelerated to zero (assuming a prefectly spherical Earth), and unless you hold onto something you'll be dragged back into the hole again! You'll keep going back and forth until you stop yourself somehow.

Of course there would be air friciton which would slow you down a little the whole way, and so you might not actually quite make it to the other end before you started moving back towards the centre again.

Basically think of a pendulum, which is a perfect mdoel for this. A pendulum has maximum force and zero speed at the end points of its swing, and zero force with maximum speed in the middle. In theory it will go forever, until you include air friction, which makes each oscillation slightly smaller than the last.

Answer 4

Im thinking yes, because of the Slingshot effect. But im also thinking no. As you fall towards the center with the gravity, the opposing gravity on the other half of the world might not be able to stop you from breaching the atmosphere into space on the other side. Im thinking it would depend on your weight.

Gravity would be less powerful the closer you got to the center. So it might be possible that yes you would slingshot from the other side at close to escape velocity..

Stop with all this Burning up stuff people! If it were possible to drill a hole through the earth wide enough for a human to fall through it, We would have personal force fields capable of repelling heat and impact and crushing force. Especially if such a field is strengthened by heat, like that Unobtanium stuff from The Core, then the field would remain stable throughout the descent. You would just need a good sized air supply to last you several days.

Thats one of the best damn questions ive answered on here!

Answer 5

No It is not. For the following reasons
Earth contains molten magma and the very hot iron core in the middle.

Assuming one was able to drill a hole by cooling it all the way
When you jump from one end you will reach the other end ( almost) but if you don't hold on to something on the other end you will again fall down. After several yo yo s you will end up at the center. Where the gravity is zero.

Answer 6

You would melt before you reached the end. And you wouldn't "fall" out. That's what gravity is for. Even if it were possible to drill through the Earth, I doubt you would feel any difference once you reached the other end.

Answer 7

This is the 3rd question I've answered today where the answer is don't be stupid
you can't drill a hole even to the center of the earth without basically melting and even if you did people on the outher side of the earth don't fall off
dude you are either bored or in elementry school

Answer 8

Tell Me What Happens When you Reach The Centre, As The Core Will Incinerate Anything - Im Not Sure About Titanium...

Answer 9

If you could drill a tunnel straight through the Earth to the other side and if you jumped into one end of that tunnel, then you would not come shooting out the other end of the tunnel, because
You cannot get higher than before (unless you work at it or have some sort of engine), just like each next bounce of a bouncing ball never gets as high as the previous bounce. This is an application of the Law of Conservation of Energy.
The air in the tunnel would slow you down (especially if the tunnel is narrow) so you'd lose lots of speed and wouldn't have enough left to reach the other side.
The Earth rotates around its axis, so, while you're going down the tunnel, the Earth would rotate the tunnel to another orientation. You would not go along with that rotation, because you're not connected to the Earth while you're falling down the tunnel, which means that one wall of the tunnel would move into your path, so you'd start hitting the wall, which would slow you down, so you'd not have enough speed left to reach the other side.
If the Earth did not rotate, and if there was no air in the tunnel, then you could keep falling from one side to the other side of the Earth and then back again, always reaching just the same height on both sides, kind of like a ball at the end of a swinging pendulum (except that a pendulum cannot keep going forever, because of resistance from the air).
According to my calculations, you'd take 19 minutes to reach the center of the Earth, which you would pass at a speed of 9.9 kilometers per second. After another 19 minutes you'd reach the other side of the tunnel, and after twice more 19 minutes (after 76 minutes in total) you'd be back at your starting point.
If the Earth did not rotate but there was air in the tunnel, then you could not attain a high speed because of resistance of the air, and then you'd keep falling from one side to the other side of the Earth but getting less high up the tunnel every time, until finally you'd end up motionless at the center of the Earth, similar to how an empty swing that you made swing ends up motionless again after moving to and fro over ever smaller distances.
If you jump out of an aeroplane, then after a while you'll reach an equilibrium speed, at which there is an equilibrium between the force of gravity that tries to make you go faster and the drag forces from the air that try to make you go slower. That equilibrium speed (also called "terminal velocity") goes down if the gravity gets weaker and also if the density of the air increases.
If we assume that the air in the tunnel had everywhere the same density as at the surface, and that the tunnel was so wide that you would not get extra drag because of the closeness of the walls, and that you tried your best to go as fast as possible (by aiming your body straight down, with your arms tightly along your body) then you'd accelerate to about 320 kilometers per hour within about a minute, and would maintain about that speed for several hours. After about 8¾ hours you'd reach your maximum speed, of about 340 kilometers per hour, and then your speed would gradually decrease, because the gravity gets weaker the closer you get to the center of the Earth. Only after 27⅔ hours would you finally pass the centr of the Earth, at a speed of only about 4 kilometers per hour. You'd then continue to swing around the center, passing the center about once every 26 minutes, but you'd keep closer to the center after every swing. After the first passage you'd get about 420 meters beyond the center, but the second time that greatest distance would be only about 250 meters, and it would continue to decrease.
If the tunnel were narrow, then you'd get extra drag forces, so then you would not reach that 340 kilometers per hour. In addition, the air in the tunnel would not really have the same density everywhere, but would get denser the lower you went (just like the air at sea level is denser than it is high in the mountains), and that would limit your speed even more.
Of course, one cannot really dig a tunnel all the way through the Earth, because the Earth is fluid below the relatively thin crust, so such a tunnel would fill up again immediately.

Answer 10

No, as you would need some form of support to keep the hole open and collapsing, ie a liquid of some sort or cement that would equalise the hydrostatic pressure and/or casing for the same purpose.

Answer 11

Here is a thought: If 'down' for us was to keep going the same direction right through the world like a tunnel, then why don't the Aussies fall off?