• Question: If you dig a hole right the way through the centre of earth from north to south pole and you jump through, what would happen to you, would you body carry on or would you stop right in the centre of the core of the earth.?

    Asked by stevenh to Fiona, Jane, Joanna, Michelle, William on 14 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Fiona Randall

      Fiona Randall answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hey, that is a good question. I am not sure! Not sure I want to try it though 😉

    • Photo: Jane Henry

      Jane Henry answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      You’d be burnt long before you got to the centre!

    • Photo: Michelle Murphy

      Michelle Murphy answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      assuming you don’t die from cold at the poles i recon you would melt by the time you got to the core or maybe you would find a new place with dinosours on your journey to the centre of the earth.

    • Photo: Joanna Brooks

      Joanna Brooks answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Very intelligent question! Actually, it’s one of the basic problems in gravitational physics! If you assume that you don’t touch the walls of the hole, so there is no friction, technically you would bounce back and forth between the North and the South – probably staying around the centre. But if there was friction you would eventually stop at the centre of the earth because the friction would slow you down and your speed would become smaller and smaller.

Comments

  • Photo: Marianne

    Marianne commented on :

    I heard different on Qi (one of my favourite programmes)!
    Apparently you’d accelerate to the centre, decelerate on your way back out, with enough speed to *just* make it out the other side.
    Ignoring the problems of heat and physical impossibility of making such a tunnel. Just, theoretically…

  • Photo: parapassion

    parapassion commented on :

    well i was watching this movie, where the world stopped spinnig and everyone was going to die. so these scientists had to go to the core and set off some highly explosive bombs. anyway, their ship got crushed from all of the pressure. so i think that if you go to the mantle (a few hundred feet below the ocean level) you would die from all of the pressure. well this is all based on a movie, so i think that it might not be true.