If the was a hole through th earth........?

Question

and you fell in wearing all the nessacary equipment to survive the fall and you would be burned by the core.... would gravity fling you back and forth , what i mean is , after you pass the center due to momentum, when would you start falling the other way.

sorry about the awful spelling. if there was a hole through the earth***** is what i meant

Answer 1

You would fall, accelerating, but at a decreasing rate of acceleration until you reached a terminal velocity. The reason for this is two-fold: 1) as you fell, you would be encountering increasing air pressure until you were approximately half-way to the centre of the earth, after which the air pressure would start to decrease until you were at the centre of the earth, then increase again until you were half-way back to the surface on the other side; 2) as you fell there would be more and more mass of the earth above you, pulling you back towards the surface you had just left and reducing your accleration. Maximum air pressure would be achieved approximately half-way to the centre (actually when about 1/3 of the mass of the earth is above you).

Air resistance would reduce your velocity, so you could never reach the other side of the earth. You would pass somewhat beyond the centre of the earth, stop and fall back down, oscillating until you stopped at the centre of the earth, where the pull of gravity is zero.

If you remove the effects of air pressure in the question, you still do not build up enough momentum to reach the other side of the earth because as soon as you are below the surface, the mass of the earth above you starts pulling you back, so that you never build up the velocity necessary to reach the surface at the other side, although you would get much closer without the air resistance.

Answer 2

This question was answered somewhere on here before. The answer is you would continue to fall through the earth to the opposite side but lose a little momentum on the way. You would then fall back and oscillate back and forth finally coming to rest in the center of the earth.

Answer 3

I'm sure there would be a pendulum effect of some sort. Here's something to consider, though: if the hole passed directly through the center of the earth, and as you fell towards the center, which direction would you be pulled, since there was no mass to create gravity as the direct center of the planet (due to the hole)

Answer 4

You would only make it a couple miles up the other side past center, if that. The atmospheric density would be so incredibly high near the core that it would be like passing through water, or worse. That would rob all of your momentum.

Also, you wouldn't fall straight down the center of the hole, you would rub against the eastern wall the whole time, unless the hole was a winding coil-like shape.

Answer 5

You would oscillate from one surface to the opposite surface. Your greatest velocity would be right at the center of the earth. If there is no air resistance and the hole is from north pole to south pole, it would take you 88 minutes to complete one entire oscillation. (It is interesting that this is the same time it would take to orbit the earth right above the surface, ignoring air of course.)

The differential equation of motion is:
GMm/r^2 = mr''
(r'' is the 2nd derivative of r)

Answer 6

You would fall back and forth in simple harmonic motion from one surface to the other surface.

IF there were no air resistance
IF you could tunnel through the liquid in the earth
IF you didn't burn up
IF you dug through the poles in order to avoid coriolis forces
and probably a bunch of other IFs I didn't think of

Answer 7

Yes you would pass thru the center but not all the way to the other surface and then back again but not all the way and so forth....just like if you drop a rubber ball, it bounces but not all the way back.

In your description it would be called the "dead miner bounce"

Answer 8

Any hole through the Earth would cause magma flooding on Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding

Answer 9

You would oscillate in NEARLY simple harmonic motion ad infinitum.