What would happen if a hole was drilled straight through the Earth from one side to the other and someone jumped in?

Their hair would get all messed up.

They would melt once they got to the molten core.

@lucillelucillelucille I wish I could give you 100 lurve for that!

Assuming the pressure/heat/lack of oxigen doesn’t kill you, you would pass thru the center, slow down, be pulled back, pass thru the center, etc. many times. You would probably continue doing this forever, since, I am guessing, you would reach a kind of weightlessness at the center.

@filmfann :)

They would be in a different time zone.

It would take them 42 minutes to fall from one end out the other. At least according to a documentary I saw.

Personally, I think it would just cook you.

As long as you don’t touch my dixie cup telephone string, then go ahead and jump. I’ll let them know you’re coming.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! “Oh, hello there mister immigration occifer!”

@FutureMemory I agree. That’s why I removed that as a possibility. This is hypothetical; and based in an alternate reality where the molten core would have no effect on the person/object subject to the fall.

It would be like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. You wouldn’t feel gravity as you would be in free fall, and you would eventually end up back where you started unless wind resistance slowed you down.

@filmfann is correct. It’s classic simple harmonic motion, just like a weight hanging from a spring bounces up & down.

The force of gravity is exactly proportional to your distance from the center of the Earth. So force decreases linearly, becomes zero as you zoom past the center, then rises in the other direction. You would emerge from the other side with zero velocity & endlessly repeat the cycle until friction eventually brought you to a stop at the center.

@poisonedantidote That goes for you too. It’d be a decent fall, I agree. A very nervous 42 (meaning of life, the universe, and everything) minutes. But heat is not a factor in this scenario.

@gasman First actual explanation anyone has ever given me, I’ve never been able to provide facts to support my theories. Now I will have those.

This person would never make to the other side. The earth’s center core would fry this person like a french frie.

If this person did make it, where would he eventually be? What country?

they would die as soon as they get to the mantle. Their remains would be vapourised once they get to the core.
Actually, that would not happen either, because magma would shoot out of that hole under high pressure

@john65pennington Where the person ended up would depend on where the hole was started. There’s a fun tool here that helps you figure it out.

Remind me to eat a big, fat, Happy Brownie before I take that trip. lol

Lucky a hole wasn’t drilled through uranus, coz that’s anal intrusion right there & then :¬(

@john65pennington @ragingloli Once again. These factors are non-existant in this ‘reality’. The intense heat, etcetera, does not effect the person/object. And, where the person ended up would either be in the center, or; in the event that the force was enough to push them ALL the way through, then it would all depend on where the hole started.

This is a “thought experiment” about gravity and motion, right? Yes you would incinerate shortly into your journey to the center of the Earth. And good luck drilling that hole through the solid metallic core to a depth of at least 4000 miles…

@gasman Yes. Purely hypothetical, philosophical, theoretical, and relative only to the outlines in my explanation. I understand that it is not realistic. I understand that it could not, or would not, be done. I realise that the world would probably collapse on itself, and it’s orbit would probably change due to the change in mass, etcetera.

This, indeed, is a ‘thought experiment’. I agree that incineration would be the most likely outcome, probably promptly after an untimely death caused by another factor during the fall. That is why these factors do not apply in this ‘alternate reality’.

I believe after some time after he jumps he’ll stop falling.

Haven’t you ever watched cartoons? He’d pop up in China.

I imagine that the gravity would be strongest at the core (in fact emanates from there) so he’d just be stuck at the centre. Or, all gravitational force at the surface would be cancelling itself out at the centre so he’d just float there… Nice question.

Why are people saying he’d fry!! The question is hypothetical and already excludes that as a possibility!!

@AstroChuck . . . Wearing a coolie, no doubt. it’s warner brothers that’s racist folks, not me.

@tomatrondroid . . . You needn’t bother explaining over and over again what you posted in the body of your question to those that didn’t read it. Just let ‘em post like they know what they’re talking about and the rest of us can giggle at their comprehension skills.

In answer to your question, well, @gasman gave you the best answer. Welcome to Fluther.

@Blondesjon @sarahhhhh Thank you. You’ve subdued my building frustration. I was starting to think I’d worded this badly. Laugh I will.

The jumper would eventually come to rest at the center of the Earth. At least what is left of him/her.

@tomatrondroid welcome to Fluther, where no one reads the question.

@tomatrondroid No, your wording was fine.

@sarahhhhh I imagine that the gravity would be strongest at the core (in fact emanates from there)...
A reasonable and intuitive guess – but unfortunately wrong. Think of the solid earth as composed of nested spherical shells. The gravity inside any such shell is zero (this can be calculated using Newton’s theory).

So as you descend into the hole, you pass into the interior of more and more shells, while remaining outside a smaller and smaller number of shells between your present location and the center. It is the latter solid sphere, ever-decreasing in size below you, that generates gravitational force. When you reach the center you are weightless, though in this falling-through-the-hole scenario you also have maximum velocity.

The inverse-square law only applies outside the gravitational body.

@gasman interesting. Yes I imagined it would either have a very strong gravitational force or none. Thank you. I always appreciate some education on this site.

The Earth’s guts would start leaking out. Like when you lance a boil.

Guess you would get stuck at the center so better bring a jetpack to propel yourself all the way to the other side. : )

Sounds like one hell of an acid trip.

The pressure from the core would crush them but they would probably burn before that happens.
They wouldn’t even make it to the core, unless they find some mole people who have developed special machines that can help them survive the trip. Or are eaten by a giant earth worm (who by the way made the hole) whos body is designed to survive the extreme heat and pressure and spits them out at the end.

Is it a black hole?

You’d find yourself in Pellucidar.

@gasman It is too bad the Newton wasn’t around to read about Einstein’s theory of general relativity which has important astrophysical implications. For example the Earth’s gravity is not generated by the Earth but by the effect that the Earth imposes on the space-time continuum. You can’t hide from from this effect by going to the center of the Earth. The center of the Earth is actually the focal point of the Earth’s distortion of the space-time continuum. That is a place where you would NOT likely see things floating about weightless.

No good with science, but I think that near the middle, the person would just start bumping around the walls and stuff, and ultimately get stuck there, falling ’‘back and forth’’.

I believe that the person’s speed will accelerate until he’s in the center of the earth. If all air is evacuated from the tunnel then the person will decelerate at the same rate and stop at the top of the earth but on the other side.

If there is air in the tunnel the the person will accelerate at a slower rate and burn up in the center of the earth.

One would die.
From the heat escaping long before he even go any distance.

@Inspired_2write Read the question details and/or the comments made before yours: the question is specifically about the gravitational affects of jumping into the hole. We were explicitly told to disregard the effects of heat (as well as other complicating factors).

@SavoirFaire
My mistake.

If it were just a question of gravity, and the body didn’t interact with any other matter, the person would fall towards the center, with the attraction due to gravity falling to zero at the center, and then the person would ascend on the “opposite” side to the same height (to the surface), and then fall back through again, forever, since there would be no interaction with other matter.

However, the path would not be a straight one, unless you started falling at the north or south pole, because on other places you have the lateral initial velocity of the part of the surface you are on, and while that keeps you in place on the surface, as you fall lower, your relative lateral velocity would exceed the rate needed to keep in sync with the earth, so your path would be a spiral, not straight. So you probably want to use a polar tunnel.

If they interact with air in the tunnel, then they will quickly reach terminal velocity (about 120 Mph) due to air friction, and this will slow their fall to a constant, relatively slow rate, and leave them stuck oscillating near the center of the planet (gradually slowing down more and more due to air resistance).

Also if there is a column of air and they need to worry about air pressure, then yes they’d be crushed part-way down, though their corpse would continue to get stuck in the center per the previous paragraph. 1013 millibars (hPA) is surface pressure, and the diving record is about 33 atmospheres, so it looks like the person would probably be dead at 42 km down, using this pressure calculator.

I’m not sure why you asked “Would they hit the middle like a tomato to a brick wall and splatter as if hitting a solid object?” If they hit anything even at terminal velocity, yes, and they would tend to, unless you somehow made the tunnel the perfect shape, or used the north/south pole tunnel AND had some way to keep them from hitting the sides ever. (Though I imagine a side hit would be more a streaky smear effect.)

Wow. Miss all you guys.

When you get near the center, barring the extreme heat, you would encounter zero gravity.

The center of the Earth is the focal point of Earth’s distortion of the space time continuum. That’s where the gravity would be greatest. That’s why the Earth’s center has mostly a very dense core of iron and nickel. Plus the pressure from the atmosphere also would be very strong. Since a person at the bottom of the Earth is in a tunnel open to the atmosphere he will have about 67 atmospheres of pressure on him which is than 1,000 pounds. Why is that? One atmosphere is 15 pounds and 6 miles thick and the distance to the center of the Earth is 3,963 miles. So the person at Earth’s center will have 67 atmospheres of pressure on him.

Wouldn’t the gravity at the center of the Earth be pulling as much outwards as pulling inwards? The closer to the center of the Earth, the less each additional atmosphere would weigh. If the weight of additional atmospheres would total anything, it might only be about 33 atmospheres. But one would still be weightless at the center, since, unlike the atmospheres, there is nothing above that person.

@kritiper You have to look at what is causing gravity. Gravity doesn’t come from the mass of the Earth’s mass by its self.

Gravity is brought about due to the distortion that the mass of the Earth places on the space time continuum. The center of the Earth is a hard dense core of iron an nickel because that is the focal point of the distortion that the Earth places on the space time continuum.

If there was no gravity in the center of the Earth then Earth’s core would be filled with less dense (light weight) material or even hollow. But just the opposite is true.

There is no gravity at the centre of the Earth but the weight of the material between the surface and the centre transmits huge inward forces and pressures.

@flutherother So why doesn’t the material between the center of the Earth and the surface not transmit huge upward forces and pressures? If there was no gravity in the center of the Earth then it would be hollow and the dense material (iron, nickel) would be located in a layer between Earth’s surface and canter.

The center of the Earth is the focal point of the Earth’s distortion of the space time continuum. And therefore is the place where very dense core of dense iron and nickel is located.

@gondwanalon The Earth’s material does transmit huge upward forces, they exactly balance the huge weight of the material pressing downwards. As you come closer and closer to the centre of the Earth the force of gravity reduces but the denser material will always sink to the bottom.

What causes the huge weight? Gravity
What is gravity? That’s what happens when mass distorts the space time continuum.
The gravity pushes the huge mass inward all the way to the Earth’s center.

Sir Isaac Newton would likely agree with you. His theory that every particle in the universe is attracted to each other is true but incomplete. He had no idea WHY every particle in the universe is attracted to each other. Albert Einstein cleared that up with his General Theory of Relativity. I’m pretty sure that Einstein would have agreed with me.

@gondwanalon There is no gravity at the exact center of the Earth because what gravity exists from the center outwards is pulling towards the center with equal force. The further one might try to ascend outwards from dead center, the more gravity pulling towards the center one would encounter.
But what may actually occur there as far as gravity is concerned isn’t what the OP was asking, IMO. If there was a hole all the way through, and you fell in, you sure as heck wouldn’t fall all the way through…

@tomatrondroid I think, as the opposing forces of downward gravity from both directions equalized, you would come to a slow stop.

The attraction or gravity that two masses have to each other is not generated by the masses themselves. It is due to how they distort the time space continuum. In a way you can view the Earth as one mass. The Earth’s distortion of the space time continuum extends well out from the Earth (where it holds man made satellites and the Moon) all the way to the center to the center of the Earth (which olds a dense core of iron and nickel). It is interesting to me why so many people think that somehow (they can’t explain why) that gravity starts reversing itself somewhere inside the Earth.

I think they think it doesn’t so much reverse itself as work against itself at some point.

@gondwanalon Yeah. I never expressed or implied that gravity reversed itself, only that a body would reach a point of equilibrium.

Another way to look at it is that objects in Earth’s gravitational field tend to move towards the Earth’s centre of gravity but once they reach the centre of gravity there is no tendency for them to go anywhere else.