If you dig a hole through the center of the earth, come out on the other side, and then let go?

Question

would you be falling down or floating up?

Answer 1

REALITY:

You wouldn't be able to get past 25 percent of your journey without being fried to a crisp.

HYPOTHETICALLY:

You would just climb out of a hole, because the opposite side of the earth has the same type of gravity as it's opposite side. If you can understand what I just said.

Answer 2

Most people are missunderstanding your question...

Assuming you could dig the whole through the center of the earth, come out on the other side, and then you let go:

You would be falling down since up or down is only relative to the center of the earth. Once you cross the center, then you will be flying(not floating) up. However, due to air resistance, and because the earth is not completely round, you would never reach the end on the other side, and start falling again towards the center. Once again, due to air resistance, you will travel a shorter distance. Eventually, you would end up floating in the center of the earth, but since earth is not round, you will fall to one side of the center, and come to rest. Gravity would feel very low.

Answer 3

Setting aside for a moment the practical and reality issues of doing this... all of them... Consider the direction that the force of gravity forces you- down. Down is not the same direction everywhere, it is different all over the Earth, all pointing (ignoring gravitational anomalies and irregularities cause by mountains and such) towards the Earth's center of gravity, more or less in the very center of the Earth. This is where Everything is being "pulled", even the Earth itself, due to the combined gravitational effect of so much mass. It is what forces our planet to be roughly spherical.

If you were to fall down such a hole, you would reach the center and stop, weightless, since you ave fallen as far as you can go. Th bottom of the bottom less pit. Any further, and you would be going back up again. Of course you wouldn't stop immediately, you still have the momentum from the fall, so you will go past it, slow, and come back, wobbling like this for a while before coming to a rest, trapped 6 378 kilometers (3,959 miles) down.

Now we can take the realities back into account: the insane heat, the vast pressures, such a hole couldn't support itself as the mass of the Earth is still being pulled towards the center of gravity, it would collapse. Plus, much of it is molten iron, so good luck digging through that.

The deepest hole ever dug is reported to be one drilled near Murmansk, Russia, during the time of the Soviet Union. It reportedly reached a depth of 12 kilometers (nearly 7.5 miles), and did not even pierce the crust. We have never directly observed rock from the mantle.

Answer 4

The trouble with this question lies in the "if." You can't dig a hole though a body with a molten core. Even before you get to that core, you get to a point at which the pressures surrounding the hole will cause a collapse before you even near that level.

Granting that you could create this hole, though, if the current theory about gravity is right, the gravitational pull towards the center of the earth would approach zero as you approached that center and increase as you climbed toward the other side, so the answer to your question is "neither."

Answer 5

Assuming you could actually do this, you would fall towards the center of the Earth. Gravity is the force of attraction between to bodies. The force acts as though it is coming from the center of mass of the bodies. Since the Earth is relatively homogeneous we can assume the force the Earth would subject all objects to acts from its center.If there were no friction or other forces acting on you, you would forever accelerate towards the center of the Earth - reaching a maximum speed at the center, then decelerate as you went out the other hole on the other side until you reached the same distance from the center you originally started from. Then you would repeat over and over again. Fundamentally, to answer your question, you would be "falling" towards the center of the Earth from any point on the Earth.

Answer 6

Think of it this way - you have an elevator shaft that doesn't stop until it reaches the opposite side of the Earth. Now, the doors open, and you climb aboard the car, and there's no motor - it simply falls.

Assuming the shaft is free from friction (no air, no scraping on the sides), you're going to accelerate all the way to the center of the Earth. (You're acceleration is due to the gravitational attraction to Earth's center of mass.) Once you've reached the center, your speed is at maximum, and now you're decelerating (the Earth's mass is pulling you down. You decelerate all the way to the other side of the world, where (assuming no friction and the elevation there is the same), it stops just as you reach the surface.

Answer 7

You would be falling. The center of the earth is its center of gravity. If you never touched anything you would keep falling back and forth, like a pendulum until you finally stopped at the center. As for some of the other answers, true, but I believe this was a theoretical question inquiring about gravitational properties, not feasibility.

Answer 8

Assuming a hole could be dug and you would not die falling through it, you would continue to fall back and forth until finally stopping in the center. You would first fall down and your speed passing the center would be enough to bring you almost to the surface at the other side, then you would fall again.

With the right shaped curve you could build a transportation system that would take you anywhere in the world by falling through a hole with very little power needed. It would be quite a ride.

Answer 9

Imagine being at the center of the earth in a hole, how would you get out? Well, when you dig a hole through the earth and reach the half way point, you will be at the bottom of a very deep hole, and you won't be able to get up, now will you?

Answer 10

OK, first off there is no giant "gravity" magnet somewhere in the center of the earth. gravity is due to mass pulling on mass and that means that every grain of sand and every molecule of water has a gravitational force on everything else around it. we are pulled toward the center of the earth because all of the mass around us has a "center of gravity" near the center of the earth. therefore if you have a tube through the center of the earth and jumped in you would speed up initially and as you approached the center all the earth's gravitation forces above you would start to equalize with all the other gravity forces around you and you would come to a gentile stop at the center of the earths core where you would be suspended in mid-air since all the gravitational forces around you were canceld out.

Answer 11

Lets pretend such a feat is possible, and that you could dig through the molten core of the earth. Once you reached the center of the eart, you would be squashed flat, as gravity would crush you from all sides (also why the core is molten) from the core/center, every way you go would be climbing up, fighting gravity.